The Wedding Gift
by MegaTurtle2011
Summary: It was supposed to be a quick, simple, and painless wedding. What could possibly go wrong? Post-anime; sequel to "Sweet!" Van X Wendy.
1. Chapter 1

One: Plans and Preparations

The plan was a simple one, although it was the compromise to a lengthy and heated argument. Van wanted a quick exchange of vows in front of a justice of the peace. Wendy wanted a church wedding with all of her friends. They agreed to compromise on a quick destination wedding, with just a few close friends in attendance. They'd have a simple reception in a restaurant. And then they would have a week to themselves in an ocean-front cottage. (Van would have preferred an isolated cabin in the mountains, but he supposed it didn't really mattered where they went. He didn't expect to spend much time looking at the scenery.)

It was all supposed to be easy, about as painless as a wedding could be. But Wendy kept adding complications. At first the complications were merely minor additions to the plan that barely concerned Van at all, but then she decided that she needed Yukiko Lundgren's assistance in picking out a dress. Never mind that she had her friend Karen right there in town to help her with planning, along with assorted coworkers who all apparently loved to do nothing more than gossip about weddings; no, she needed Yukiko, because "she's one of my oldest friends!" Why the longevity of the friendship should have mattered so much remained a mystery to Van, but there it was: Wendy insisted that she and Yukiko had to meet to discuss the wedding, and it had to be soon. The wedding was to be in late autumn and, as Wendy kept pointing out, the summer was practically over.

Her first idea was to travel to the town of Gloria to visit the Lundgrens. That would have been reasonable and relatively painless. She could have taken a bus, gone for a few days, and come back without disrupting their lives too much. Van had wholeheartedly supported that plan. But somehow, instead—and Van never understood how this happened—this evolved into a plan by which the Lundgrens would come and spend a four day weekend in Evergreen, bringing their baby and their Cocker spaniel. "I hate dogs," Van grumbled, when he heard about this addition.

"They'll probably keep it in a crate most of the time," Wendy said, using the mild, cheerful voice that she brought out when she thought Van needed soothing. If anyone else had spoken to him that way, he would have thought it was patronizing. Since it was Wendy speaking to him, Van tipped his head up enough to meet her eyes briefly, acknowledging what she had said without having to pause as he shoveled food in his mouth.

Wendy was sitting in her favorite armchair, reading the letter from Yukiko for what was probably the tenth time. A cup of coffee sat cooling on the table next to the chair, along with an empty dessert plate. Van had given a pass to the coffee, but he was on his second piece of pie, and in the back of his mind he was contemplating a third. This was Wendy's strawberry-apple pie, and it was pretty damn good.

"I don't like babies, either," Van muttered. "Are they going to leave little what's-his-name in a crate, too?"

"Van, you're terrible!" Wendy exclaimed.

"I don't mean a dog crate," he qualified, "just one of those pen things people put babies in."

"You don't really hate babies, do you?" He looked up, startled not so much by the words she had spoken as by the tone in which she said them. It seemed that he had misunderstood Wendy's objection.

"It's not like I know much about them," he said cautiously. She didn't look any happier. "Does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! Don't you want to have children?" Her voice had gone from irritated to anxious. This must be important to her. Van took a long swig of milk to get the stickiness out of his mouth, then set the glass aside.

"To tell the truth, I never really thought much about it." What was there to think about? Either you had children, or you didn't. Some people had children they didn't want. Some people wanted children they didn't have. It had never really seemed to have much to do with Van. But clearly, Wendy expected him to have an opinion on this subject. "I guess if you want kids, we can have some. Just promise me you won't name any of them after that idiot brother of yours."

"Van!"

"What?" Wasn't that enough for her? He thought that he was being pretty gracious about the subject.

"What do you _really_ think?" He sighed and hung his head. He could already tell that this was going to be a long conversation. He was right.

Unfortunately, as time was to prove, it was just the first of many such painful conversations. Wendy seemed to have an entire list of things she thought that she and Van needed to talk about before the wedding, and she wasn't willing to accept "Dunno," "Haven't thought about it," or "Whatever you want" as answers to her questions.

It was, therefore, something of a relief when the Lundgrens showed up. With guests to entertain, Wendy didn't have the time to keep springing unexpected personal questions on Van. She was able to chatter with Yukiko about such random subjects as how to recognize which were the best dishtowels, how to expand the customer base for a growing restaurant, or what trends in small-town politics should be taken as warning signs of trouble down the road. And, of course, they spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the wedding.

Van slipped out of the living room the first time the conversation took a turn towards wedding dress design. To his dismay, Joshua following him out to the front porch. "It's great to see you again, Van!"

"You already said that, kid," Van pointed out. He sank down on the porch steps; he was not surprised when Joshua joined him. Time to play nice, he decided. "How've you been?"

"Oh, just great! My armor repair business has been going great, and I've started branching off into customization and upgrading. You'd be surprised how much business you can attract even in a little town in Gloria."

"You'd do better working in a larger city, wouldn't you? Like River City, or Zonnet Junction?"

"It's not a bad living," Joshua said with a shrug, "and Gloria is Yukiko's home. Wherever she is, I'm home."

"Yeah, I get that," Van said. He had no home town; no roots; no place with any but painful memories. As a far as he was concerned, Wendy _was_ his home. His only goal was to spend the rest of his life with her, wherever she might be. And that reminded him of something he'd been wondering about. "Hey, kid . . ."

"Yeah?"

"You've been learning more about the Original Seven, haven't you?" He had a vague memory of Wendy telling him something like that.

"Oh, yeah. We found Saudade's wreckage back when we were searching the ocean for Volcain, you know. It was too damaged for us to repair, though. Maybe we just didn't know enough, but I'm not sure that anyone would have been able to repair it. Anyway, Bucci and I studied that thing for years trying to figure out how it worked. The Originals really are amazing, you know. They aren't like other armor at all."

"Yeah, yeah," Van said quickly, hoping to prevent any unnecessary gushing. He knew that his armor was special. To be honest, right now he wished that it wasn't quite so amazing. "Did you learn anything about how the Originals' healing capacity works?"

"Well, you would know more than I do about that," Joshua said frankly. "You've used the healing factor a lot, haven't you?"

"All I have to do to be healed is ride in the armor," he said. "It works even if I don't want it to work. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"But why wouldn't you want to be healed?" Joshua asked, puzzled. "That's part of what makes you and Dann the strongest fighters on the planet. With that healing factor, you're practically immortal!"

"That's the problem," Van said. Joshua frowned. He looked over at Van, his face wrinkled in confusion.

"I don't get it. How is living forever a problem?"

"Would _you _want to outlive your wife?" Van asked bluntly. "Would you want to watch her grow old and frail while you stayed young and healthy?" The confusion fled Joshua's face, to be replaced by sympathy.

"No, of course I wouldn't want that," Joshua said. "I want to grow old with Yukiko." He stared at the ground for a minute. "I never thought about what that would mean for you and Wendy, Van. Gosh, that's awful."

Van didn't want Joshua's sympathy. He wanted his _help_. It killed him to have to ask for a favor, but there was no way around it. "Right. So, I've been wondering . . ." He didn't get very far in his request before he was interrupted. Something tumbled down the porch stairs and fell with a thump on the sidewalk below the porch. The thump was followed by an unholy wailing.

"Ray!" Joshua cried. He jumped to his feet to scoop up the baby. "Are you all right?" Judging from the screams the thing emitted, the answer would appear to be "no." Van began edging away slowly.

* * *

><p>Wendy and Yukiko had moved from the living room to the kitchen, where they could spread catalogs and magazines out on the table, the better to compare wedding dress patterns. Wendy had already picked out a potential dress at a local dressmaker's shop, but she wanted a second opinion before she put down a deposit, and Yukiko was quite happy to oblige.<p>

They both looked up at the sound of a crying child. "Do you think he's hurt?" Wendy asked, slightly amazed at the volume that so small a child could produce.

"It doesn't sound too serious," Yukiko said. She had put down the magazine in her hand to listen. "I think Joshua will manage," she concluded. "He's very good with the baby." Wendy couldn't help sighing a little at that. Yukiko didn't miss the sound. "Is something wrong?" her friend asked.

"Not really. It's just that Van doesn't like children." She and Van had put that topic of discussion to rest after that initial conversation a couple of weeks ago, but his reaction still bothered her. True, he had said that she could have as many children as she wanted—but she didn't want him to simply tolerate his own family. She wanted him to want a family as much as she did.

"Lots of people who don't like children still end up loving their own children," Yukiko said. "And even if he doesn't think he wants children now, there's still plenty of time. In five years or ten years, Van might think about things differently."

"I know, but . . ." Wendy paused and looked around the room. On the far wall, there was a line of family portraits. Some of them were charred around the edges, showing that they had been rescued from the fire set by the Wild Bunch years ago. "I've been without a family so long," she whispered at last. "I can barely remember my parents, you know. And Michael's been gone for more than six years now. I'd like to have a family again."

"Oh, Wendy." Yukiko reached out and covered Wendy's hand with one of her own. "You _have_ a family. Joshua and I think of you as a sister. And you have Van now, too. You don't need to have children to be a family."

This sounded like wisdom, but Wendy couldn't hep thinking that it was easy enough for Yukiko to say that when she had a husband who clearly adored his young son. "What is it like, being a mother?" she asked. Then, before Yukiko could answer, Wendy changed the question to one that was of more immediate concern to her: "What is it like to be a _wife_?"

This was the real reason she had wanted to see Yukiko before the wedding. Fun as it was to look over dress patterns, that wouldn't have been reason enough to send for the Lundgrens: after all, Wendy did have friends in Evergreen who loved to do nothing more than talk about weddings. What she didn't have in Evergreen, though, was a close friend who was also a married woman. There were hundreds of things Wendy wanted to know about married life, and some of her questions were ones she would not have felt comfortable asking anyone else. Yukiko answered her questions—even the most embarrassing ones—patiently, without making Wendy feel naive or intrusive for asking. Somehow, too, all of their conversations left Wendy feeling increasingly confident about the new life she and Van would be starting.

* * *

><p>There wasn't as much time as Wendy would have liked to have had with her friends. Joshua and Yukiko could only stay for a few days, since they both had work to do in Gloria. To Wendy, at least, it seemed that they had hardly finished saying their hellos before they had to say their goodbyes.<p>

"We'll see you in Harbor Parade in November!" Yukiko said cheerfully on the morning of their departure. "Write to me if anything about the plan changes!"

"What is there to change?" Van grumbled. "It's simple. We go there, we get married, we get out of town."

Joshua laughed. "Don't expect it to be _that _easy! Weddings are complicated," he said. "But it'll all be fun!"

"Fun?" Van repeated bitterly, once the door closed shut behind the Lundgrens. "The last wedding I was at ended in murder, and he thinks this will be _fun_?"

"It won't be like that," Wendy promised. She leaned against him, resting her on head on his chest. "The Claw is dead, and there isn't any reason for anyone to want to kill either of us."

"That's what I thought the last time," Van growled. He wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly. "I'm not going to be happy until this is all over, and you're safe in my arms."

"I _am_ safe," Wendy murmured. For that matter, she was technically in his arms, too. She didn't point that out, because she was pretty sure that that wasn't what he really meant. "I'll be perfectly fine. And even if some kind of catastrophe did occur, you'd be able to protect me! You're stronger now than you were when . . . when you lost Elena. You have Dann now. Together, you're practically indestructible!" He had been stroking her hair with one hand, but he paused at that sentence.

"That's true . . ." he said slowly, "but . . ."

"But what?" Instead of answering her question, he changed the subject.

"I bet it's not too late for us to elope."

"I thought we_ were _eloping!"

"It's not eloping if you send out invitations." She decided that he had a point there. Even a five minute wedding didn't really count as an elopement if it was planned ahead of time, she supposed. "We could make this even simpler," he suggested. "We could walk over to the courthouse right now, and be married in half an hour."

"Van, we're not doing that! We've been through this already, remember?" They'd had a similar conversation weeks ago, and Wendy had thought that they had resolved the disagreement successfully. She had been working so hard to plan a wedding in such a short time. What was he thinking, trying to change things now? "It's a little late in the game to be changing plans. I've already sent in some of the deposits, you know. I paid for the dress yesterday, and the seamstress may have started making alterations."

"We wouldn't have to cancel the formal wedding," he told her. "Not if you still wanted to go through with it. It would just be a kind of delayed celebration, right?"

"So you're suggesting that we just lie to our friends, and pretend we're not married when we really are?" Wendy was so annoyed that she stepped out of his embrace, pushing his hand away when he tried to reach out for her. She realized almost immediately that that had been a mistake: his eyes narrowed and the corner of his mouth drooped down in one of his lopsided frowns. She had unintentionally antagonized him.

"No one said anything about lying. You could tell everyone that we got married ahead of time. What does it matter?"

"It matters to me," Wendy retorted. "I can't believe that it doesn't matter to you too. _You're_ the one who told me that the day you get married should be the happiest day of your life. Don't you even believe that?"

"Of course I do!" he snapped back. Kameo, who had been snoozing in the corner, woke up and looked over at them, a worried expression on his face. "Getting married is a blessing. But it's getting married that's important, not _how_ you get married. We'd be just as married either way. That's all that matters to me." Wendy sighed. It was hard to argue with that. She decided to try changing tactics.

"I thought we agreed that this was what we were going to do," she said simply. "This is what we decided together." He sighed theatrically, and pulled his hat down to hide his eyes. There was a long and awkward silence then, which Wendy was determined not to break. Let him sulk if he wanted to.

"I know we agreed to wait until November," Van said at last, "but aren't you worried that something will go wrong?"

"No," Wendy said with a confidence that she didn't have to fake. She could see nothing to worry about. "It really is a simple plan. Even if there are some minor mishaps, how could anything go seriously wrong?"

"I guess you're right," he said doubtfully. Then he looked up from under his hat. "Even I couldn't be unlucky enough to have two fatal weddings!" he said, smiling a rather grim smile.

"Of course not," Wendy agreed, infusing as much encouragement into her voice as she could. "Everything will be fine. You'll see!"

* * *

><p>Author's note: I plan to update this story about once a week. Don't expect a story as long as "Sweet!"—this one will be considerably shorter. <em>Do<em> expect more drama later on!

Of course, I don't own the characters, setting, or plot of _Gun X Sword_, but you already knew that, didn't you?


	2. Chapter 2

Two: Bride and Groom

"I have never in my life seen a more jittery groom," drawled Will Cooper. "When my oldest got married, he was about as white as a sheet during the whole ceremony. Thought he was going to pass out, so I told the best man to stand behind him in case he fell! What do you know, but the only person to pass out was the matron of honor. She collapsed right when they were exchanging rings. Anyway, I thought that was bad, but Van here really wins the prize for nervousness. He looks like he's going to bolt any time now."

"He won't bolt," Joshua said. "I don't think he will. Will he?" It was an alarming thought. What would they do if they had a runaway groom?

"He might," Cooper said skeptically. The two of them were lounging on a bench in front of Harbor Parade's enormous wedding chapel, watching Van pace back and forth while they waited for Yukiko and Karen to show up with Wendy. That would be it, as far as the guest list was concerned. The original plan had called for the Eldora V to accompany the Lundgrens to Harbor Parade, since the gang had seemed eager to honor their "disciple" at his wedding. Unfortunately, a late-night drinking binge had left all of the old timers unable to make it to the bus station on time. They might show up late, but Joshua wasn't counting on it. At their age, traveling so far was difficult.

"What are you two talking about?" Van wanted to know. He _was _uncharacteristically anxious, Joshua had to admit. And he kept one hand near the hilt of his sword, as if he were afraid he was about to be attacked.

"You're not expecting trouble this afternoon, are you?" Joshua joked, trying to lighten the tense mood. Van whirled around and shot him a fierce glare that reminded Joshua why that might not be so funny to his friend. "Just kidding! But seriously, calm down. Everything will be fine. Weddings are supposed to be happy things."

"_You're_ the one who told me that weddings were always complicated."

"Well, yeah, but I meant that something would probably go wrong with the cake or the dress or something like that. Nothing really terrible is going to happen. I promise."

"You can't promise that. No one can." Van pulled his hat down over his eyes and went back to pacing. Joshua exchanged a worried look with Evergreen's sheriff.

"Guess he has more reason than most grooms to be antsy," Cooper admitted. "Once bitten, twice shy, as they say."

"At least it'll all be over soon," Joshua said. He realized after he had spoken that he was managing to make a sacred exchange of vows sound like an uncomfortable medical procedure. He tried to clarify. "I mean, since it's just a five minute ceremony, there's hardly_ time_ for anything to go wrong."

"It doesn't take more than five minutes to ruin someone's life forever," Van growled. Joshua decided that it was better not to try to cheer his friend up further. Once Wendy got here, she might be able to calm her jittery groom down a little. No one else was likely to be successful.

It was a relief to him when he spied a group of three women rounding the corner. One had dark hair piled high in a bun; one had brown hair that hung down a little longer than shoulder length, and the third was dressed in the traditional white. Her hair was shrouded with a heavy veil, but its red-orange color shown out even beneath the ornate lace. "Here they are!" Joshua said. He waved with both hands to the group. Wendy waved back. Yukiko smiled, looking just a little frazzled.

"About time!" Van called out. "You're late."

"Actually, they're right on time—" Joshua started to say, but Van didn't linger long enough to hear him finish the sentence. Instead, the lanky man stalked past Joshua towards Wendy. Yukiko and Karen exchanged the sort of meaningful glances that women were always fond of, then left Wendy alone with Van. Yukiko carried Wendy's bridal bouquet for her; Karen had charge of the camera.

"Are we all ready?" Joshua asked Yukiko. "Everything's okay, right?" She had a wrinkle in her brow that boded ill.

"Everything's fine," she said, belying the worried look on her face. "We heard some odd rumors in the hotel cafe when we went to pick up sandwiches for lunch, but I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

"Should we get into the chapel, then? It's just five minutes before the hour." Although the chapel took walk-ins, Wendy had set up an appointment ahead of time, so that she and Van would not have to wait in line. Having seen how poorly Van was handling the wait, Joshua had to conclude that this had been a wise choice. Perhaps if they were lucky, the chapel would be able to fit them in before the scheduled hour. Even five more minutes of watching Van fretting was more than Joshua wanted to see.

"Let's give them a moment," Yukiko suggested, glancing back at the couple. "They may have things to talk about." Van was holding both of Wendy's hands in his own, and though the two spoke in a low murmur that could not be heard from where their friends stood, the looks on their faces suggested that they would not appreciate being interrupted. Yukiko nudged Joshua in the ribs with a tactful elbow, and he turned his back on the couple, letting them have their privacy.

"So what about these rumors?" he asked.

"Someone seemed to be talking about Van being in town," Karen answered. "At least, we think they were talking about him. They were talking about a Pretty Boy Van from the Garbage Dump who had a good armor. Neither of us recognized that nickname, but how many armor-riding Vans could there be in the world?"

"He has a lot of nicknames," Joshua agreed. "I can't keep track of all of them. Wendy might know. What did she think?"

"We didn't like to mention it to her," Yukiko explained, still frowning. "She has enough on her mind right now."

"I'm sure it'll be okay. Even if someone was looking for Van, they wouldn't know to look here," Joshua said. "No one would think that Van was in town to get married!" Frankly, he found it hard to believe that Van—who had always seemed so oblivious to the women who flocked around him—was actually going to tie the knot. He hadn't believed it himself, not at first. The fact that Van was marrying Wendy had made the news seem all the more unlikely. It had been clear to Joshua, even when he had been a sometimes self-absorbed teenage boy, that Van had always had a soft spot in his heart for Wendy Garret. It had never occurred to him, though, that Van's deep-rooted affection for Wendy might someday take a romantic turn. Back when they were all traveling together in pursuit of the Claw, Van and Wendy had spent so much of their time bickering with each other like belligerent siblings that Joshua had assumed that that's how they saw each other. Looking back, he wondered if he had missed some subtle signs that might have indicated otherwise.

Not that it mattered, he thought, as he glanced back over his shoulder at the bride and groom. You didn't need to be an astute observer of human behavior to see the affection they had for each other _now_. He might have been skeptical of the match when he first learned of it, but seeing the two of them together in Evergreen had convinced him that theirs was a workable (if tempestuous) relationship. He hoped with all his heart that Van would find the happiness he had been missing for so long.

* * *

><p>The first thing Van said to Wendy when they met on the sidewalk in front of the chapel was "What took you so long?" Wendy had been hoping for a compliment on her dress, but one look at Van was enough for her to see that he was not at his best right now.<p>

"It took longer to get the veil right than I thought it would," she explained. "When I practiced before, I didn't have all these flowers in my hair, and it was hard for us to figure out how to clip the veil on without damaging the flowers."

"Huh," he grunted, looking down at her. He reached out to take both her hands, clasping her hands within his own larger hands. She was wearing elbow-length white gloves, but the light pressure of his hands on hers was still comforting. "It looks all right to me."

"Thanks." She awkwardly asked: "So . . . how does the rest of the outfit look?" It was the first time he had seen her in the dress, and she had been worried about his reaction. She knew that the sight of bridal gowns sometimes triggered unpleasant memories of Elena's murder. She wanted, as much as possible, to change that. She knew that it would be impossible to forget such tragedy, but she hoped that making memories of a better, happier wedding day would help Van continue to heal.

At the same time, she wanted to make it clear that their wedding was not a replacement for the one that had been ruined, just as she could not be a replacement for the woman whom Van had lost. She was not the same as Elena; though Van loved her, she knew that he did not cherish his memories of Elena any less for having found a second love. His love for Wendy was something different. Their wedding would mean something different, too. To that end, she had tried to pick a dress that would be as particularly suited to her, Wendy—and as distinct from what Elena had worn—as could be. Instead of roses in her bouquet, she had sunflowers and daisies. The flowers in her hair were daisies, too. She had eschewed the customary silk or satin, choosing a dress made of white cotton instead. Her dress sported a bell-shaped skirt with three tiers, each tier ornament edged with a border of ribbon and lace. The sleeves and hems were also edged with bright yellow ribbon, matching the sunflowers in her bouquet. The one touch of elegance was the veil, which was a creation of intricate lace that Wendy's mother and grandmother had worn for their weddings in their own time. It was, perhaps, a little too ornate to blend well with the rest of her clothing, but Wendy considered herself lucky to still have such an heirloom after all the many disasters of the past.

"Hmm." Van looked over her outfit, moving his eyes from her head to her feet and back up again. He paused a little at some points, his gaze lingering on her curves just long enough to raise a faint blush on Wendy's cheeks, as much from surprise as from anything else. She had often seen admiration in Van's eyes when he looked at her, but he didn't normally stare at her in quite that way. Then she thought about the way things would change for them after today's ceremony, and her blush deepened. "You look good," he concluded. She squeezed his hands tightly in response.

"So do you," she said shyly, joking: "Black suits you. You ought to dress that way all the time." He lifted the corner of his mouth a little at that, though he still looked unsettled.

"You nervous?" he asked.

"A little." A lot, actually. It wasn't that she was afraid that anything was going to go wrong. It was just that this was a momentous step in their lives together, and she couldn't help being a little awed by something so important. "What about you?"

"I'm terrified," he whispered. Her mouth fell open a little in surprise. She hadn't expected to hear those words from Van, of all people. "I don't know if I can go in there," he continued, still speaking so quietly that she had to lean in a little closer to catch his words. "I'm afraid I'm going to panic and make a fool of myself."

"You won't," Wendy whispered back fiercely. "You're stronger than that. And you'll have me beside you. We'll be facing this together. You'll be fine. It's just five minutes, love, and then we'll be married, and no one can take that away from us. We'll be together for the rest of our . . . the rest of _my_ life." He would outlive her, of course, because of his link with Dann, but that didn't mean that they couldn't have a happy life together as long as she lived.

He sighed, then took a deep breath. "Wendy," he said, "There's something I ought to tell you."

"Yes?" She tried to say it encouragingly, though a sudden jolt of fear soured her stomach. Judging from the somber look on his face, whatever he was going to say must not be good. "What is it?"

"Hey, guys, it's time!" Joshua yelled loudly enough to be heard down the block. The sudden shock gave Wendy a jolt of a different kind—for a moment, she thought that she was going to have a heart attack. Wendy and Van dropped each other's hands and turned towards the cluster of their friends.

"You don't have to alert the whole town, Joshua," Wendy complained.

"But it's time! You'll be late if you don't start moving!"

"Yeah, yeah," Van grumbled. He adjusted his hat and started trudging in the direction of the huge stone wedding chapel.

"What were you going to tell me?" Wendy whispered to him, still a little worried about that expression on his face.

"It'll wait," he told her. He offered her an arm, and she rested her hand on it as they began walking in the direction of the chapel."Let's get this over with." She couldn't help wondering what it was he had been going to say, but Joshua was right: they would be late if they lingered any longer. And it wasn't as if they wouldn't have plenty of time to talk about whatever it was later.

Wendy took her bouquet back from Yukiko and tried to look composed as she entered the chapel. Inside, the chapel was as hectic as she remembered it. There were brides everywhere: some in traditional white dresses; some in pastel shades of blue, yellow, and green. (Wendy had considered wearing a yellow dress, in honor of her favorite color, but she had decided that the yellow trim on her dress would be enough.)

"Ah, right on time!" one of the ministers in the chapel said. "We're running behind schedule just a little, so why don't you fill out the paperwork before you say your vows." He thrust a clipboard at them. Wendy took it gingerly and signed with her maiden name. Then she handed it to Van, who signed his name as Van of the Dawn. "Perfect!" the minister gushed. "Looks like we're ready. Right this way, please, and we'll have you married in no time." He led them through the crowd until they were standing in front of the graceful Gothic window, which opened out to a view of palm trees and distant ocean.

"Smile!" Karen called. She had taken the camera out of its case and was snapping pictures right and left. Wendy smiled. Van frowned.

"Try to look more cheerful," Wendy whispered to him, taking his hand. "Happiest day of your life, right?"

"I'll be happy when it's over," he said, repeating the same line he'd been saying for a couple of months now.

"Well, at least pretend to be happy for the sake of the pictures, can't you?" He opened his mouth, no doubt intending to argue, but the minister interrupted.

"Everybody ready?" Wendy and Van turned to face him, still holding hands. Out of the corner of her eye, Wendy saw Karen lowering her camera so that she could watch. Joshua was beaming. Yukiko smiled serenely. Sheriff Cooper, oddly enough, had his hand on his gun, and kept looking back over his shoulder at the door. Apparently Van wasn't the only one who was a little jumpy this afternoon.

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered . . ." the minister began, but the familiar words were interrupted by a sudden spate of gunfire. Wendy gasped and dropped her bouquet. Van dropped her hand, drew his sword, and stepped in front of her to protect her from incoming fire, all before she could really process what was happening. Sheriff Cooper executed a surprisingly nimble spring over the back of a pew, then peered around the corner, aiming his gun at the trio who stood framed in the doorway. Everywhere, people were screaming, crying, and running.

Two of the three people standing in the doorway were men in black suits, wearing sunglasses. The third was a woman in a red business suit. She had dark hair, bright blue eyes, and a bitter smile. She was armed with a black pistol, and she held it as if she were well used to its weight in her hand.

"No one move!" roared the big man with a machine gun. No one listened to him. He pointed the machine gun up at the ceiling and began firing again. "I SAID, NO ONE MOVE!" This time, people froze in terror. "That's more like it."

"No one has to get hurt," said the second man. His gun was pointed right at Van. "We just want Pretty Boy Van's armor. If you just hand it over, we'll leave quietly, and you can all go on with your weddings."

"Oh my God," wailed the minister. He lay on the floor, covering his head with his hands. "Who invited the Mafia?"

Van sighed. "I knew I had a reason to hate this town."


	3. Chapter 3

Three: Vows and Secrets

I don't believe this, Van thought. He stared with mingled disbelief and anger at the armed mafiosi standing in the doorway of the chapel. He must have the worst luck in the world when it came to weddings. He also couldn't help thinking that all of this could have been avoided if Wendy had just listened to reason and let them get married in a private ceremony in front of Evergreen's justice of the peace, instead of making him travel all this way to a town that he already hated just so they could get married in a big chapel full of morons.

No one was hurt yet, though. That was one good thing. He was going to do his damnedest to see that the situation remained that way. He glanced over his shoulder at Wendy, who looked just as shocked as he felt. "When I give the signal, you're going to run for the nearest cover, and stay out of the way until this is over," he told her. She looked up at him and nodded. He was relieved that for once she didn't try to argue with him, though her jaw was set at a familiar determined angle.

Van flicked his eyes back to the front of the chapel, scoping out the situation. "Are you prepared to hand over your armor?" asked the woman in the red business suit. "Or do you need more persuasion?" Normally, it would have been easy for Van to take out three people, even if they were armed with machine guns. The problem was that he was standing in a room full of potential hostages, some of whom he cared about, and one of whom he loved more than anything in the world. He couldn't risk Wendy's life. He would die rather than let anyone hurt her. If he had to, he would give up Dann for her sake.

But he didn't think that he was going to have to do that. If he could lure the mafiosi outside, he could deal with them without hurting anyone. "Wendy," he whispered, "listen up. Change of plan."

"Huh?"

"I'm going to turn myself in." He heard her gasp. She opened her mouth, undoubtedly intending to protest, but he spoke first, lowering his voice so that no one else would hear. "I'm just going to get them away to someplace where I can deal with them without putting you in harm's way. We'll meet up later."

"Where?" Wendy whispered so quietly that he had to lean in to hear. "There could be more people looking for you, even after you take care of these guys, so we'll have to go somewhere where they wouldn't think to look."

Damn, he hadn't thought about that. She was right: they probably should ditch the rest of their plans for the day. If these idiots had been able to track them down to the wedding chapel, they might have somehow found out the rest of the itinerary. It wouldn't be safe to show up at the beach house they had rented. They would have to think of somewhere unexpected to go.

They didn't have much time to think. "I'm a patient woman," Miss Red Suit called from the opposite end of the room, "but I'm about to start counting down from ten. When I get to 'one,' you'd better be walking towards me, _or else_."

"Can't we all just sit down and talk about this like civilized people?" someone suggested. Not surprisingly, it was Joshua. Kid would try to reason with anything . . . criminals, homicidal maniacs, or automated dragon armors. For once, though, Van was grateful for his pointless intervention. It bought him a few extra seconds in which to try thinking of a meeting place.

Fortunately, Wendy thought of one for him. "What about that abandoned campground outside of town? We passed it on the way into town, remember?" Van thought about it. Yes, he remembered the place. After years of homeless drifting, he was used to keeping an eye open for good temporary quarters, so he had noticed it simply from habit. It was certainly deserted enough, and far enough from the rest of the town that it was unlikely that anyone would think of looking there.

"Good choice," he told her. "I'll meet you there as soon as I can."

"I'm counting now," the woman said, having given up arguing with Joshua. "Ten . . ."

"Wait!" Wendy grabbed Van by the tail of his swallowtail coat just as he was about to step forward.

"What?" They really didn't have time for this. The woman was still counting down in the background.

"Are we officially married yet?"

"Huh?" How would he know? And why on earth would that matter? But it seemed to matter to Wendy. She stepped back and poked the minister with her foot.

"Just leave me alone!" the minister wailed. He was huddled in a ball on the floor, pathetically trying to hide from everything.

"Are we married now, or not?" Wendy demanded.

"I don't know! Maybe? You signed the paperwork, but you didn't say the vows."

"So?" Van was starting to get interested in the technicalities of the situation, despite the time constraint. He had just realized that if they WEREN'T legally married, they were going to have to go through all of this nonsense all over again. They'd be saving themselves a lot of trouble if they made sure that they had things squared away now. "What does that matter? Whatever I'm supposed to promise, I do."

"I do, too," said Wendy. "Does that make us married?"

"Yes!" the minister yelled, still covering his head with his hands. "By the power invested in me by the city of Harbor Parade, I now pronounce you man and wife! You may now kiss the bride."

Van and Wendy exchanged a wistful look at the sound of those six traditional words."No time for that," Van said regretfully.

"Later," Wendy suggested, flashing a brief smile at him. "Now you'd better go."

"ONE!" yelled the woman with the gun.

"Yeah, yeah," Van said. He put his sword away and lifted his hands in the air. "I'm coming, alright? Just leave these people alone." He walked back down the aisle, keeping his eyes moving to make sure that he didn't miss any details. He stepped outside the chapel and sighed with relief when he heard the door slam shut behind him. He was surrounded by idiots with guns who wanted to take his armor, but that didn't matter. So long as all the gunmen were with him, Wendy was safe.

"Now, Pretty Boy Van, time to hand over your armor," Red Suit said.

"I can't do it here," Van said. "It needs room to land." There was some truth to that, but he mostly just wanted to get more distance between himself and the wedding chapel, so that Wendy would have a chance to get away. "Find an open space without any people in it, and I'll summon Dann." They had to be morons if they thought that him summoning Dann was going to be a good thing for them. Judging from the smug looks on their faces, they really were that stupid.

"We'll go to the south pier," Red Suit announced. "Dock number five. It's empty, so there should be room there."

"Great," Van said. "Let's get this over with."

"Not so fast," the woman said. "Hand over your sword first." Maybe she wasn't as much of an idiot as she seemed.

"I can't do that," Van told her. "I need it to summon my armor"—and to block bullets if the three of them began firing at him, but he wasn't about to say that.

"Fine," she snapped, "but if you make a single move without our permission, we'll drill you with holes so fast you won't have time to shit your pants."

"I'm not stupid," he said. "I know when I'm beat." And he knew when he had the upper hand, as he did here. With his sword and his armor, he had little chance of being defeated in battle. He just hoped that this fight wouldn't take long. He had better things to do today.

* * *

><p>Wendy watched her husband walk away, fearing the whole time that something else was going to go wrong. But he made to the doorway, where he was immediately flanked by the two men armed with machine guns. They escorted him out the door. It wasn't until the door slammed shut behind them that Wendy was able to draw a full breath. She was feeling weak in the knees, so she sat down on the platform. She hadn't realized it, but she was shaking.<p>

"Wendy! Are you all right?" That was Joshua, who came running up to fuss over her, though it ought to have been clear that she wasn't injured.

"Try putting your head down." Such matter-of-fact advice could only come from Yukiko. Wendy smiled wanly and tried putting her head down. It did help, a little. She couldn't help wishing that she had Van here, though. She would have felt safer with him by her side.

"I'm all right," she told her friends. "Just a little shaken up."

"Anyone would be," Yukiko said kindly. "Who would have expected that?" Van had expected trouble, Wendy thought vaguely. She had insisted all along that nothing could possibly go wrong. It looked like he had been right. He was going to be so smug now, wasn't he?

"So, now we know why someone was trying to find Van," Karen murmured.

"What are you talking about?" Wendy looked up in time to see Yukiko and Karen exchanging a meaningful look.

"This morning, we heard someone in the cafe talking about an armor rider in town," Karen said, "but we weren't sure that they meant Van."

"And you didn't tell me about it?" Wendy asked, starting to get angry.

"We weren't sure that they meant Van," Karen repeated. "And we didn't think they wanted him for anything like this!"

"We didn't want to worry you," Yukiko said simply. "Weddings can be stressful enough without having to worry about . . ."

"About the mafia," Wendy said, rubbing her temple with one hand. She could fell a headache coming on. "I guess I should have known that the plan wouldn't go smoothly. But all's well that ends well, right?" She looked up and scanned the chapel. People were still freaking out all over the place, and one or two brides had fainted, but as far as she could tell, no one was injured. "We got off pretty easily, I suppose."

"But what about Van?" Joshua asked.

"Van can handle three armed ruffians with one hand tied behind his back," Wendy said confidently. "And we set up a rendezvous place, so he'll be able to find me when this is all over." In fact, she probably ought to get moving, if she wanted to make sure that she was there, waiting for him. "Do you think it's safe for me to go back to the hotel to get my luggage?" she wondered. "What if those three had other accomplices? We might be followed."

"I don't know," Yukiko said doubtfully. "You _are_ very recognizable in that dress."

"Switch dresses with me," Karen suggested. "We're close enough to the same size that you can wear my clothes. If anyone IS following you, they'll be confused."

"Good idea," Wendy said. She rather regretted having to change out of her lovely dress, but it was probably for the best. She would hardly want to be lurking around a dirty campground in a clean white dress.

"BUT WHAT ABOUT VAN!" Joshua practically yelled. "Isn't anyone worried about him?"

"What's to worry about?" Wendy said. "He's Van the Indestructible, isn't he?" The look on Joshua's face was both ludicrous and alarming, as several emotions chased themselves around his face at once. None of them looked very positive. "Joshua," Wendy said slowly, "is there something you know that you're not telling me?"

"It isn't for me to tell you," Joshua said, sounding miserable. "Van was going to tell you himself after the wedding."

"Tell me what?" Wendy asked, trying to be patient. Joshua looked over at Yukiko as if looking for help.

Yukiko looked just as puzzled as Wendy felt. "If you know something that might affect our plans, maybe you should tell us, secret or not," she said at last. "This is an emergency, isn't it?" Joshua nodded, looking a little relieved.

"All right. Wendy . . . you know that Van's link with Dann keeps him from aging, right?"

"Of course I know that!" That was why Van still looked like a man in his twenties. By now, he was at least nine years older than he looked. For the time being, Wendy found that rather convenient: no one looking at her and Van together would have guessed how much older than her he really was. Later, of course—when she had grown elderly and he had not—it might be awkward for Van to be married to a woman who looked so much older than he did, but Wendy preferred not to think about that far in the future.

"Well, he asked me to change that."

"What?" Wendy could not have heard that correctly. What Joshua had said wasn't possible. Was it?

"He wanted me to reprogram Dann's healing function," Joshua explained. "The way it was originally programmed, the armor just automatically restores the rider's health without being asked, including the normal effects of time. He wanted me to modify the program so that it would only heal injuries, not natural illnesses or aging."

"What?" Wendy repeated. She shook her head, trying to grasp this. "So he'll age now? He'll die?"

"Yes. If I did the programming correctly, he'll grow old like anyone else, and if he gets sick, he could die, like anyone else, unless he specially requested the armor to cure him. We tried to set it up so that the armor could still heal illness and natural health problems on command, if necessary, but only injuries—cuts, puncture wounds, broken bones and such—are supposed to be automatically fixed."

"But . . . when did you do this? How did you have time?" They had all met up in Harbor Parade just yesterday.

Joshua looked embarrassed. "I worked on the programming for a couple of months," he admitted. "When we visited you two in Evergreen, he asked me to look into it. I got Bucci to help, and we used Saudade's programming as a model; the programs are the same, you know. I finished the program a week ago, and put it on a databoard. All I had to do was transfer the new program over to Dann yesterday."

Wendy stared, stunned. "He's been planning this for months?"

"Yes."

"And he didn't tell me?" Oh, he was going to be in so much trouble. Wendy wasn't averse to pleasant surprises, but _this_? Something like this was too important to be sprung on her unexpectedly.

"He wanted it to be a surprise," Joshua said, looking embarrassed. "It was going to be his wedding gift to you."

"What kind of a wedding gift is THAT?" Karen demanded. Wendy felt much the same way.

Yukiko, unexpectedly, disagreed. "I think it's romantic," she said. "Wendy, he wanted to grow old with you."

"That's it at exactly!" Joshua beamed at his wife for a moment before turning back to Wendy. "That was what he told me. He wanted to grow old along with you. He didn't want to watch from the sidelines while you faced death, either," he explained. "I think he thought that if he was going to be sharing a lifetime with you, he ought to share mortality, too."

Wendy shook her head again, trying to sort all of this out. It had never occurred to her to wonder whether Van wanted to live forever, to be eternally young. She had just assumed that he had no choice in the matter, since he was linked to Dann. If she had known that it was possible to change things, would she have wanted him to give up his immortality in exchange for a normal life with her? She honestly wasn't sure. That was an awful lot to ask of anyone.

She also wasn't sure why this worrying Joshua so much. "You said that Dann is still supposed to heal Van's injuries automatically, right?" she asked. "So if Van got shot, Dann would just heal the wound, like he always does."

"That's how it's supposed to work," Joshua agreed, "but, like I said, I just installed the new program yesterday evening. It hasn't been tested yet. Van was going to do some trials to make sure it was working properly before he went back to work in Evergreen. If the program isn't working properly, it might mean that Van's injuries wouldn't be healed."

"So he could die," Wendy whispered, feeling a sudden sinking in her stomach. "If one of those idiots shot him, he might just die."

"He might," Joshua agreed. "The program should work, but I can't guarantee it. So now you see the problem . . . what are we going to _do_?"

Wendy thought about this for a moment. Try as she might, she could think of no way to help Van. "There really isn't anything we can do," she said at last. "We don't know where he went, and even if we did, if any of us followed him, we'd just get in the way."

"You'd just be handing them more hostages," Sheriff Cooper agreed. He had missed some of their discussion because he had been helping restore order in the chapel, but he had heard the last few minutes of conversation. "Besides, I've been working with Van for months now, and I've never known him to get seriously injured anyway. What are the odds that he'll even need to use the healing function?"

"That's a good point," Wendy said, feeling a little comforted. "He's good at blocking bullets with his sword." She certainly hoped that he would block any attacks that came his way. She didn't relish the idea of spending their wedding night in the emergency room, while a doctor patched up wounds that would normally have healed themselves.

Better to think of other things. She was going to have a lot to do, and not a lot of time to do it. Assuming that Van returned uninjured, they would need something to eat, and someplace to sleep tonight. She'd have to arrange all of that while keeping a low profile, in case there were more people looking for them. "Karen, let's go change dresses," she said. "Joshua and Yukiko, you should get back to the hotel and make sure everything's okay there."

"It'd be good to make sure that Ray's all right," Yukiko agreed. They had left him at the hotel in the care of a good baby sitter, but of course, none of them had bargained for this kind of trouble.

"I'd better stay here and talk with the local law enforcement," Cooper said. "If you run into any trouble, you'll find me here or at the hotel."

"Right," Wendy said, feigning a confidence that she did not entirely feel. "Let's get to work." And let's hope that Dann's healing powers are still working, she silently added. If not, she might kill Van herself, just for making her worry this much. _What _had he been thinking?


	4. Chapter 4

Four: Man and Wife

The South pier was a commercial pier, and it was, in fact, nearly deserted. There were a few boats in docks on one side of the pier; none at all on the other. "Can you bring your armor down here?" Red Suit asked Van.

"It's perfect," he said. "Stand back." He swung his hat around on his head, drew his sword, and summoned Dann. The armor dove down from the sky and crashed into the pier, leaving a substantial dent.

"I hope Port Authority doesn't get us for that," murmured one of the men in shades. Oh, you're going to have more important things to worry about than _that_, Van thought.

"Now, hand over your sword," Red Suit instructed.

"I could do that," Van said amiably, "but it's not like you'd know how to control the armor, is it?"

"How hard could it be?" she asked. "I've been riding armor for years." Yeah, I bet, Van thought. He'd seen what passed for "armor" in this town. It was not even remotely like the real thing.

"This isn't some souped-up muscle car," he told her. "Look, I'll get inside and show you how it works."

Her eyes narrowed. "Not so fast," she hissed. "I wasn't born yesterday." Could've fooled him. "Hand over the sword, and step away from the armor."

"That's not gonna happen." Instead of moving away from Dann, Van began to back closer to the armor, keeping his sword out so that he was prepared to block bullets.

"You want us to waste him, boss?" one of the sun-shaded goons asked.

"Yes," Red Suit said. "Now that the armor's here, we don't need him. Sorry, buddy, but you're toast." The two goons pointed their machine guns and started firing, but Van was ready for them. He kept his sword spinning so fast that none of the bullets could hit him. At the same time, he began edging back towards his armor, until he was close enough to climb up to the cockpit. This was the tricky part. He was used to being able to scramble into his armor in a hurry, but it was much harder to do that when under a machine gun barrage.

Still, he me managed to make it to the cockpit without injury, though one bullet bounced off the ring on his hat. "Wake up, Dann," he said, setting the sword in place. "It's time to get to work."

He had thought that it would be easy to take down the three mafiosi, but they proved more challenging than he'd expected. To put it more accurately, catching Red Suit proved more challenging. Unarmed men were no match for an armor, and Van dispatched each of the suited goons with a single rap on the head from Dann's sword. But before that—while they were still firing pointlessly at Dann—Red Suit made her escape. He bolted after her as soon as the goons were down. The bright red of her outfit made her easy to follow.

No problem, he thought. Dann could run faster than she could. She should be easy to catch! And, to be fair, if she had kept to the main road along the harbor, he could have easily caught up with her. She was too smart for that, though. She ducked around a corner into a narrow alley, one just a little too small for Dann. Van was undaunted: he took to the roof of the warehouses along the alley, galloping after her. But when he reached the alley's end, she was nowhere in sight. She had slipped into one of the buildings when he wasn't looking, he guessed.

Now what? He walked around the block, trying to scope out the situation. He hadn't seen which building she might have entered. Several on this block were boarded up; others were well-maintained and guarded with tall fences and strong-looking locks. If he had to guess, he would guess that she had slipped into one of the abandoned ones, but that still left several options. He could try searching the buildings; problem was, he couldn't do that from Dann. He'd have to do it on foot. He was trying to decide if it was really worth the hassle when he spied the red dress escaping from one of the boarded-up buildings. He galloped down the street after her, dodging people and cars. If he wasn't careful, he was going to cause a whole series of traffic accidents.

Somewhere in the background, a police siren began to wail. He glanced behind him, and saw that he was being followed by an armored police car—here, they'd probably consider it an armor. Well, it wasn't likely to be much of a threat to Dann. Van turned his eyes to the road, only to find that Red Suit had given him the slip again. Somehow, in that brief moment when his eyes were turned, she had vanished.

Just as he was prepared to give up the pursuit of his enemy, the choice was taken away from him. Another police car came barreling around a corner in front of him, cutting him off. From the loudspeaker blared a voice: "You. In the armor. We have you surrounded. Surrender!" Van sighed. Why couldn't he ever get a break?

* * *

><p>Because there were errands to do before nightfall, it took Wendy a couple of hours to get to the abandoned campground. She had half-expected to find Van waiting for her there, but he was nowhere in sight. She made the rounds of the campground once to make certain of that, then looked around a second time with an eye to how best to make use of the resources here.<p>

The campground had apparently catered mostly to tent campers, but there were a handful of rather pathetic log cabins clustered around the small lake that must have once been the main attraction here. (No wonder the campground had failed: who would want to camp by a miniature lake when the ocean was just a few miles away?) Two of the cabins were uninhabitable, with gaping holes in their roofs that had never been repaired. A third cabin was being used for storage, all its rooms being packed with odds and ends. The fourth was half-full of storage, but the main room was empty. Wendy decided to set up camp here.

Both the bedrooms in this cabin were packed to the brim. One was full of boxes that appeared to contain sports equipment. Wendy could not imaging needing half-a-dozen life vests or a broken canoe paddle, so she shut the door on that room and went to investigate the next room. This room was much more promising. It was full of stacks of towels, linens, and blankets. The outer layer of each stack was a little dusty, but Wendy found, digging through the middle of some of the piles, that there were clean blankets and sheets in the middle. She pulled some out and brought them into the main room of the cabin.

The main room, a combination living room/kitchen/dining nook, was the only room that was still furnished. It boasted a table and chairs and an uncomfortable looking sofa. Wendy dumped the bedding on the sofa, then looked around a little more. Everything in here needed to be cleaned, and the whole place could stand to be aired out. She opened a few windows first, then investigated the little kitchen in one corner of the room. There was, of course, no electricity, but there was, surprisingly, running water. She had been afraid that she would have to boil lake water to use for washing. The water that came out of the faucet in the little kitchen area of the cabin was rust-colored, but it smelled clean and tasted drinkable.

Since the electricity was out, the refrigerator wasn't working, but Wendy was prepared for that. She hadn't been sure what she would find at the campground, so she had stopped to buy ice, drinking water, some basic foodstuffs, and of course milk. She filled the freezer compartment of the refrigerator with ice, then packed it with the groceries she had gotten. Then she got to work cleaning.

By the time she had made the room livable, the sky outside had darkened enough for a few stars to show, and she was beginning to worry about Van. There was no way he could have failed to find her; something must be keeping him. In the past, she would have shrugged off her worries, confident that Van the Indestructible would come back to her in one piece. She could no longer be so certain about that. What if Joshua had somehow bungled that program? Van might have been caught in a fight without the protection of Dann's healing powers.

Either way, there was nothing she could do about it, not now. Since she had no idea what had happened to the three criminals who had interrupted their wedding, she didn't know whether it would be safe to venture back into town. And even if she had gone back into town, she would have had no idea where to begin to look for her husband. Harbor Parade was much larger than Evergreen, and Wendy wasn't as familiar with it.

So she continued to work on transforming the abandoned cabin into a comfortable temporary living space. She had bought candles and kindling from the general store in town, and she set about lighting candles in strategic places about the room. This was something she had hesitated about: it might be possible to see the flicker of candlelight from the road. She didn't think it was likely, but she couldn't rule it out. Nor could she rule out the chance that if she lit a fire in the small wood-stove, someone would notice the smoke and come to investigate. She comforted herself by thinking that the owners must not care much about the camp. Since the camp was not fenced off, and the locks on the front door had been broken long ago, it was completely open to trespassers. Wendy and Van would likely not be the first people to use it as a temporary shelter. And, in any case, the night felt like it was going to be a cool one. They would need a fire.

After the fire was kindled, there was not much else to do. She settled down with a book, intending to read by the light of the candle she had placed on the arm of the uncomfortable sofa. The book was a mystery that she had found in the general store. It was by an author she knew only by name, and she had been looking forward to having a chance to read it. But she wasn't able to concentrate on the novel at all. Instead, she found herself staring blankly at the pages of the book and wondering where her husband was.

* * *

><p>Van had never been a fan of law enforcement. In all the towns he'd visited, in an all the emergencies he'd faced, he had rarely found the local police to be of any use. Sometimes they got in his way. Sometimes they mistook him for the bad guy. Once or twice they had tried to arrest him. It was true that he was now, ironically, working part-time in Evergreen's sheriff department. But much as he respected Sheriff Cooper, Van hadn't really grown any more fond of law enforcement in general.<p>

This run-in with Harbor Parade's police force seemed to reinforce his opinion. The police insisted on bringing Van "downtown" to talk about the incident on the dock, even though—as Van pointed out many times, growing less and less patient each time—he was the victim of attempted theft. At the police station, they wanted to confiscate Van's sword. This he could not allow, and the ensuing confrontation threatened to get very ugly indeed. It wasn't until one of the cops in the station ID'd the captured men in black as goons working for Cesar Montana that anyone started listening to Van's story.

"Cesar Montana? Not Tony?" Van asked, surprised.

"How do you know who Tony Montana is, if you're from out of town?" the officer wanted to know. Van sighed, realizing that he'd said the wrong thing. He ought to have denied any knowledge of the Montana family.

"I've been here before," he explained wearily. "This isn't the first time someone from the Montana family tried to take my armor."

"What's so special about your armor?" the officer asked, still sounding suspicious.

"Dunno," Van lied. "People just like it, I guess. Can I go now?" Of course, he could _not_ go. They made him stay in the station for nearly three hours. When they finally released him, it was only because Sheriff Cooper had shown up to vouch for him.

"Son, you have a knack for finding trouble," Cooper observed as they walked out of the station at last. "How do you do it?

"It's not like I try!" Van protested. "You think I _wanted_ to get in a fight today?"

"Guess not. Just see if you can stay out of trouble the rest of the week, all right? I have to get back to Evergreen tomorrow, so I won't be here to bail you out again."

"I don't plan on causing more trouble, but I can't really make any promises," Van said. "That woman in the Red Suit is still out there somewhere. Who knows whether she's given up or not? And she might not be working alone. This town is full of idiots."

"Can't blame you for thinking that. Anyway, congratulations." Cooper slapped Van on the back as he said that, then turned and walked away. It took Van a few seconds to realize what he had meant by "congratulations." Despite the mafia, the morons, and the police, he was married now. At least something had gone right.

The abandoned campground that Wendy had suggested lay a few miles out of town. Van was a good walker, so it was not very far by his standards, but by the time he reached the campground, night had fallen and a cool wind was blowing. Apparently, November could be chilly even in a supposed tropical paradise. The smell of woodsmoke told Van that there was a fire burning somewhere. Surely there couldn't be other people camped near this pathetic little lake? Perhaps Wendy had built a campfire.

He had worried that it would be hard to find Wendy, but when he turned off the road and headed down the dirt lane that led to the center of the campground, he saw that one of the cabins by the lake was softly lit from within. He drew close enough to peer through the front window. Though the cabin was only dimly lit, he could see Wendy sitting and reading a book by candlelight. Trust Wendy to have found a book, he thought, and despite his weariness, he smiled a little.

He hesitated for a moment when he got to the door, not being sure what protocol demanded. Should he knock, so he didn't startle her? No, he decided, that was silly, and there was no reason for him to stand outside stalling. He simply walked in through the door as casually as if this were any normal day, rather than the most important day of their lives. "Hey, I'm back!"

His wife looked up at him and smiled that dazzling smile that he loved so much. "Welcome home!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** Look at what we have here: another update! That makes two chapters in one week! I'll be particularly interested to see reviews on this chapter.

**Disclaimer:** This chapter is about the wedding night. No, it is not explicit. I'm not trying to write erotica: I'm more interested in the characters' emotions than in what their bodies are doing. However, I'm also trying to tell a story about Van and Wendy's developing relationship. Now that they're married, it would be kind of difficult to write about their marriage without saying something about their sexual relationship.

My intention was to keep this chapter at a T rating, in line with the rest of the story. As it turned out, I think the second half of the chapter may slide closer to M territory (definitely not explicit, though). Just to be safe, I've marked that section off with a double dividing line. If you think you'd be uncomfortable reading it, stop when you get to that point. Alternatively, you can just skip this chapter and wait for Chapter Six. You won't be missing any important plot details.

* * *

><p>FIVE: Lovers<p>

Welcome home, she had said. Van looked around, a little puzzled. "It's not exactly home, is it?"

Wendy's smile dimmed. "It isn't much, but at least it's a roof over our heads, right?"

"No, I just meant . . . our home is in Evergreen. _This_ isn't home. This is just . . ." He looked around the room, searching for the right words. The room smelled pleasantly of woodsmoke. It was too dark to tell much else about the place, except that none of the windows seemed to have been broken, and the ceiling looked sound. Viewed as a temporary shelter for two drifters, it would have been perfect: a lucky find, indeed, compared to some of the places he and Wendy had slept when they were on the trail of the Claw. "It's fine," he concluded. "It's just not exactly what we had in mind for our honeymoon." Squatting in an old cabin at an abandoned campground could hardly be anyone's idea of the perfect wedding night. Wendy deserved better.

To his surprise, Wendy just laughed. "I think it's kind of fun."

"Fun?"

"It kind of reminds you of the old days, doesn't it?" Apparently he wasn't the only one reminded of all the times they had slept in caves, or under the open sky. There were some significant differences between their current situation and their past travels, though. He opened his mouth, intending to point that out, then paused, not sure how Wendy would react if he tried to crack a joke about their status as honeymooners. As he hesitated, Wendy went on talking: "Are you hungry?"

"Starving." Thanks to the interruption from the mafia, they had missed the dinner they had planned. Van's stomach had been complaining for at least the last hour. "There's probably nothing to eat here," he realized. He should have thought of that earlier. He could have brought takeout or something from town.

"It's all right. I picked up some groceries."

"Groceries?"

"Bread and cold cuts and things for sandwiches. And I picked up some blueberry turnovers for breakfast." Somehow, Wendy managed to sound cheerful.

Van just stared at her for a moment. He wanted to say something to Wendy about how amazing it was that she could still be cheerful after their wedding had been ruined. He wanted to praise her for finding a comfortable and safe place for them to sleep. (It really had been a brilliant choice: even if half the criminals in Harbor Parade had been looking for Wendy and Van, they would never have found them here). He wanted to thank her profusely for having remembered to pick up food, since he had so clearly dropped the ball on that. He also, frankly, wanted to take her in his arms and ravish her right then and there. But he didn't have the right words to express any of that. So he simply said, "Well, let's eat!" hoping that at least some of the rest of it would be clear enough without words.

* * *

><p>They had a simple meal of sandwiches, fruit, potato salad, and cookies. The food wasn't bad, and the dinner took on a little elegance simply by virtue of the fact that they were dining by candlelight. Still, it was an awkward meal. Conversation was strained. There were several subjects that Wendy thought they ought to discuss, but which she did not want to bring up. One of them was the issue of Van's attempt to trade immortality and eternal youth for aging and mortality. Unless he had spoken with Joshua since the wedding, he wouldn't know that Wendy knew about this. On the one hand, she thought that she ought to tell him that she knew about the change to Dann's programming. On the other hand, Joshua had said that Van had changed the healing function as a gift to her. If it was gift, then she ought to let him announce it in his own time.<p>

Keeping silent about the secret proved difficult. She wanted to chew Van out for keeping something so life-altering—something which concerned both of them—a secret from her. She also wanted to reassure herself that he was still going to be healed of any injuries. And, on some level, she wanted to thank him for being willing to give up the benefit of eternal youth just so that he could share the stages of life with her. (She figured the thanks could wait until she had scolded him first.)

She did try, once, to bring up the subject indirectly. "Those gunmen didn't hurt you, did they?" Since he was clearly uninjured, if they had hit him, he must have healed.

"Naw," he muttered through a mouthful of cookie crumbs, "they had lousy aim. Didn't even nick me." So that told her nothing about whether Dann's healing function was working. She supposed that as long as he was here and in one piece, it didn't matter. Not for now, anyway. Hopefully he'd have a chance to test things out before the next battle. She opened her mouth to suggest that, then remembered that she wasn't supposed to know about the problem at all yet. She sighed. "Something wrong?"

"I'm just tired." It wasn't exactly a lie. It had been a stressful day, and she was feeling the effects.

"Hmm." Van took another cookie. He ate it in two bites, then chased it down with milk. Then he brought up the other issue Wendy had been unwilling to mention. "So, where do you want me to sleep tonight?" He kept his head ducked down, so that his hat hid his eyes. He must be just as nervous about the subject as she was, Wendy realized. Oddly enough, that knowledge gave her more boldness.

"We're married now, aren't we?" she said quietly. "So I assumed that you would sleep with me."

"Yeah, but . . . well, I know that's what we were planning, but we weren't planning on all of this." Van's wave indicated the contents of the cabin, but Wendy guessed that he meant more than just their current physical surroundings. "Everything's kind of messed up . . . and you just said you were tired . . . and since we haven't ever . . . well, what I mean is, if you want to wait for a better time, that's okay."

From the sound of it, he was going to keep babbling for quite some time. Wendy found his awkwardness endearing, but she decided to step in to spare him from his own embarrassment. "Van, I don't want to wait. I _want_ to sleep with you tonight." She spoke plainly, so that there was no way that he could misunderstand her, though doing so put a blush on her cheeks.

"Oh." They both looked down at the table for a few long moments, while Wendy's blush deepened. "In that case," Van said hesitantly, "can we go to bed now?"

* * *

><p>If you want to avoid any sexual content, stop here! (I promise, though, there's really not much objectionable.)<p>

* * *

><p>Technically, there was no bed. Wendy had found a disassembled bed frame leaning against the wall of one of the bedrooms, but there was no mattress to go with it. Fortunately, there were plenty of blankets. Wendy had built up a thick layer of the heaviest blankets she could find on the floor in front of the small wood-burning stove. It might not be five-star luxury, but it was certainly more comfortable than what Wendy had expected when she first hatched the plan of camping out here.<p>

One advantage of not having electricity in the cabin was that there was no need to even raise the question of whether to keep the lights on. Wendy blew out the candles in the dining nook, leaving the room dimly lit by the fire in the wood stove and a few remaining candles. The dim lighting was something of a relief to Wendy when they slowly began undressing each other. In the flickering shadows, she did not feel exposed, despite the hungry way her husband watched her.

That was something of a surprise to her. Van was usually a laid-back man. Most of the time, he was content to lounge through life with the minimum effort possible. During their courtship, the couple had spent much of their time sitting on the porch, watching sunsets, moon-rises, and falling stars. Van and Wendy knew each other well enough to be comfortable with silence, and when they weren't bickering together, they were often silent together. From the outside, Wendy supposed that their relationship must look boring and passionless.

There were, however, a few things that could wake Van up, allowing something more active and expressive to break through his usual relaxed persona. Van in the midst of a heated battle was an entirely different person than Van in the middle of a nap. Even his reaction to a good meal was . . . attention-getting, to say the least. Wendy was now discovering that there were other things than eating and fighting that could awaken that fierce enthusiasm.

To the extent that she had thought about it at all, Wendy had somehow assumed that Van would be a laid-back, lazy lover. This was not the case. It wasn't that he was hurried or violent. On the contrary, his hands were both patient and gentle as they explored her body. It was just that there was an unexpected intensity in his expression that somehow colored everything he did and said. She had never seen him this way before. In fact, she realized, no one else had every seen him like this, either. This was a side of Van that only she would ever know.

If she had loved and trusted him any less, Wendy might have found his ardent desire a little frightening. She had never in her life felt as vulnerable as she did when they were at last intimately coupled together. But this was Van, whom she could trust with her life. She could trust him with this, too. Despite the awkwardness and occasional discomfort of the situation, she did her best to match his enthusiasm.

* * *

><p>Van once told Wendy that he had been alone all his life. It was true. Except for the all-too brief time when he had lived at Original Point and worked with Elena and Gadved, he had been without a home or a family. Most of the time, he had even been without friends. One of the most surprising things about the last six months of living in Evergreen was the realization that he finally had a place to call home . . . and, more importantly, someone to come home to.<p>

After all those years of solitude, what awed him most about their union as man and wife was that he was so clearly _not_ alone. He and Wendy were together, as close physically and emotionally as any two people could be. When they undressed each other by candlelight, he had been awed by her beauty. He felt amazingly privileged just to be allowed to look at her body, let alone touch it. But that was nothing compared to how it felt to be joined to her . . . to look down into her wide green eyes and realize that they were profoundly _together_. Brief as this moment of union might be, he would have traded all the world for it. A lifetime of solitary wandering would have been worth the pleasure of coming home to Wendy.

Van was not an articulate man. Even with those he cared about, he found it hard to share his most important thoughts or feelings. He certainly was not able to explain to Wendy how he felt now . . . at least not in speech. So he tried to speak through the language of his body, using every kiss, caress, and movement to communicate all the things that he was not able to put into words.

He wasn't sure how much of what he was trying to communicate came across to her. He could tell that she was finding all of this a little overwhelming, so he tried to restrain some of his ardor. They would have a lifetime together in which to explore the marriage bed, and there would be plenty of time for passion later. This was the time for tenderness. But the fervency with which she returned his embrace suggested that she understood at least some of what he was trying to say with his body.

Afterward, they turned so that they lay side by side in front of the snapping fire. This way, he could continue to hold her without worrying that he was going to crush her. "Damn, that was good," he murmured in her ear. "Thank you." Instead of answering him, she kissed him just below his jaw. "You okay?" he asked, pressing his lips lightly against her forehead to punctuate the question.

"Mmm hmm," she murmured back. After that, they just rested in a comfortable tangle. Van listened to the sound of his lover's breathing, feeling himself starting to slip into sleep. One of them ought to get up to blow out the candles, he thought groggily. But lying here was far too comfortable for him to seriously contemplate getting out of bed.

Wendy woke him up with a question. "Van?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you happy?"

He considered the question. Happiness wasn't a word that he used lightly. He wasn't a particularly happy person. When he was with Wendy, he was comfortable. Content. But happy? Half-asleep as he was, he had to think about that for a moment. "Yes," he said at last. "Happiest day of my life."

"Good," she murmured sleepily. "I'm glad." There was another peaceful silence then. Eventually, both of them fell asleep, and the candles burned down to their ends.


	6. Chapter 6

SIX: A Walk in the Park

The morning after the wedding, Wendy was awoken by the sound of Van shouting "DAMN, THAT'S COLD!" She opened her eyes, sat up, and blinked, momentarily disoriented. She was alone, and it took her a moment to realize that the background noise was the shower running. Then, as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, she gradually realized what had happened.

"I'm sorry, I should have warned you!" she yelled, hoping he could hear her over the running water. "There isn't any hot water. The hot water heater must be electric." Or maybe it was gas, and the gas had been turned off. That would make sense: leaving the gas on in an abandoned cabin could be a fire hazard.

"Damn right you should have warned me! This water is freezing!" Van appeared in the door way of the little hall that led to the other rooms, still trying to towel himself off. Wendy looked up, intending to admire his well-muscled physique, but her admiration turned to amusement. On the rare occasions when his hair was not confined by his hat, it was usually a disheveled mess. Now, it was wet and plastered to his head. Wendy giggled. "You won't think it's funny when it's your turn to take a shower," Van grumbled.

"It's not that," she explained. "But you look kind of like a drowned rat." She got up from the tangle of bedding and stretched. "I guess the trick is to shower in a hurry?" she suggested.

"Or not at all."

Once she got in the narrow stall and turned the water on, she saw that there was some wisdom to the idea of skipping a shower entirely. The water WAS freezing. She washed her hair in record time, and got out of the shower as quickly as possible, wishing that she had a bathrobe. Unfortunately, that was not one of the things she had salvaged from the hotel.

By the time she got out, Van had gotten more or less dressed (minus his coat and bolo tie) and was drinking a glass of milk at the kitchen table. She took the blueberry turnovers out of the fridge, and, for once, poured herself some milk, too.

"I thought you preferred coffee."

"I do, but there's no way to make it," she explained. That was one of the inconveniences of camping here. Maybe she could get a cup later . . . "Do you think it's safe to go into town?" She wouldn't mind a chance to dig through her luggage. Yukiko had quickly packed a bag of toiletries and a change of clothes for Wendy, so that Wendy wouldn't be seen going back to the hotel. It had been very helpful, but there were still a lot of things missing that Wendy would have liked to have. Besides, the cafe in the hotel had good coffee.

"I need to go find that idiotic mafia woman," Van said. "You should stay here." She frowned. "You can read a book," he suggested.

"You don't really think I'd be in danger, do you? I mean, they're after _your_ armor."

"They might use you as a hostage. It's safer if you stay here."

"You'd be in danger, too. It's not as if you're invincible, you know," Wendy snapped back. Then she froze. She hadn't meant to say anything at all about that subject. She was still waiting for him to bring it up himself. He scowled.

"Dann is the strongest armor in the world. Don't worry about this job. It'll be just a walk in the park for me."

"But you don't always have Dann," she argued.

"What's your point?" Her point was that she wanted him to finally admit that he had let Joshua tamper with Dann's programing. She had given him all kinds of opportunities to admit that. Just when was he planning on telling her, anyway?

"I don't know. It's just . . . I might be vulnerable, but so are you! _You _wouldn't stay here and hide just to be safe, would you?"

Apparently, he wasn't planning on telling her about the changes now. "If I had my way, I'd never set foot in that town again. But I need to make sure that no one's going to be coming after us. Look—for once, could you please just do what I ask?" If he had not thrown in that "please," she might have continued to argue. But she could tell that this was something important to him. In truth, though she had little desire to stay cooped up in this cabin all day, she had even less desire to go running all over town chasing the mafia.

"All right," she said at last. "I'll stay here."

"You will?" He stared at her, his narrow eyes wider than usual with shock. Really, Wendy thought, was it _that _surprising that she was willing to do what he wanted?

"I will," she reiterated, then added: "If you're not back by the end of the day, though, I'm coming looking for you!" He frowned for a minute, then nodded.

"Give me until sunset," he said. "If I'm not back by then, you can come looking for me. But," he added after taking another swig of milk, "I plan on being back here by lunch."

"If you do, can you pick up something for us to eat?" she suggested. "Otherwise, it'll just be sandwiches and fruit again, and we're going to get sick of that."

"We'll be out of here in no time," he promised. "Once I settle this, things will go back to the original plan. Everything will be fine." Wendy hoped that he was right.

* * *

><p>The Lundgren's original plan called for them to spend a couple of extra days in Harbor Parade after Van and Wendy's wedding. Yukiko had wanted a little time to enjoy the seaside; Joshua wanted to have a chance to consult one or two of the town's many armor repair experts. What passed for armor in Harbor Parade might not look much like the armor Joshua worked on, but there were a few similarities in terms of armaments and panel construction, so he was interested in learning more about how things were done here.<p>

Yukiko wasn't sure how the disaster at the wedding would change their own vacation plans. Joshua wanted to stay in town as long as necessary until the mafia problem was resolved. "Van might need our help!" he insisted. Yukiko privately thought that this was unlikely, but it did not seem an issue worth fighting over. Van would probably solve the problem himself, and she would use the extra time (if there was any) to do some shopping. Clothing selection in Gloria was as limited as ever, and it was nice to be visiting a city with more stores to shop from. She would have to wait to do that until Joshua was free to look after the baby, though. They had only hired the babysitter for one day.

Joshua had picked up a copy of _Armor Aficionado _from the giftshop in the hotel and was reading the magazine with interest at their breakfast table in the cafe. "I'm going to take Ray to the park this morning," Yukiko told him.

"Okay," he said cheerfully, not looking up from his reading.

"I mean the park up by the north beach," she clarified, in case he needed to find them. "I heard it has good walking trails, so I'll take the stroller."

"That sounds nice" he said, still not looking up. "I'm sure Ray will love that." Yukiko thought that Ray looked more interested in gnawing on the saltshaker. She pried it out of his grasp and distracted him with a graham cracker. He started to cry the moment she took the saltshaker away, but he immediately shoved the graham cracker in this mouth, which muffled his disgruntled sobbing.

"I'll be back before lunchtime," she told her husband.

"Mmm hmm."

That was not a satisfactory answer. She couldn't be sure that he was paying attention; he did have a habit of focusing very hard on whatever had caught his attention, and right now, that was the article he was reading. "Joshua, when am I going to be back?" she tested.

"Before lunch!" So he had been listening.

"All right, dear. We'll see you later."

"Have fun."

It was a beautiful autumn day, and there were many other people at the park who seemed to have had the same idea Yukiko did. They were out there walking dogs, pushing strollers, flying kites, or watching as older children played. There were old men lounging on the benches and gossiping with their cronies. Watching them, Yukiko wondered uneasily how the Eldora V were doing without her there to look after them. The passing years hadn't really slowed down their drinking at all, but as the men grew more frail, the kind of shenanigans they pulled were increasingly dangerous. Yukiko was unhappily aware that one of these days, one of them was going to take a bad tumble and end up with a broken hip, or worse.

She pushed that worrisome thought aside and tried to enjoy the beautiful day. Ray seemed to like the park. He was particularly struck by the many sea gulls that flocked to the park in the hope of picking up scraps of food from picnickers. He kept pointing at the gulls and kicking his feet with glee. "Bird," Yukiko told him.

"Ba!" he said the next time he saw a gull. She was impressed. He hadn't started talking at all yet. Was this going to be his first word? She'd have to tell Joshua all about it. Her excitement waned a little when he pointed at a big black dog and enthusiastically chirped"Ba!" at it. He used the word again a few minutes later when they passed another baby in a stroller. Apparently he hadn't quite mastered the word "bird." Well, at least he was trying. It was really too early to expect him to start talking, anyway, no matter how precocious he might be.

"Ba!" Ray said again, pointing at a fountain in the middle of the park. There was a bird perched on the head of the statue in the middle of the fountain. He had gotten it right this time.

"That's right, bird!" Yukiko said encouragingly. She turned the stroller in the direction of the fountain, curious to see what the statue depicted. Once she got closer, she could see that it was a mermaid: quite possibly the ugliest mermaid she had ever seen. Why one earth would anyone want to put a statue that hideous in a public park?

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Yukiko turned to see who was addressing her. It was a young woman of about her own age. She wore a blue dress and a dark kerchief over her hair, which made her look older than she really was.

"Yes? What is it?"

"Have you seen my niece? She's only five years old. I just turned around for a second, and she was gone!"

"Your niece?" Yukiko looked around doubtfully. The park was full of children. "What does she look like?"

"She has brown hair and brown eyes and freckles," the woman said.

"I'm sorry," Yukiko said, "but I don't know how much help I would be. Since I don't know what she looks like, I wouldn't really know how to recognize her." Half the children in the park seemed to have brown hair. "What was she wearing?"

"A pink dress." That was more useful.

"I haven't seen anyone matching that description," Yukiko said regretfully, "but I'll keep my eyes open. Now, if you'll excuse me—" To her surprise, the woman grabbed her arm.

"Please," she sobbed, "you must help me find my Antonia!"

"I'll try," Yukiko said, "but . . ."

"She's just so small and helpless," the woman sobbed. She dragged Yukiko away from the fountain, and away from the stroller. Yukiko tried to turn back, but the woman clung to her arm as if it were a lifeline. "What would I do without my daughter?" she lamented, still pulling Yukiko further away from the fountain.

Wait a minute here, Yukiko thought. "Your . . . daughter?" she repeated.

"Yes, my poor little daughter Antonia."

"But . . . I thought you said that she was your niece." Had she misheard? The woman hesitated for a moment, then renewed her sobbing at an unbelievable pitch.

"She_ is _my niece, but she's like a daughter to me!" she wailed. "Poor little Toni! You must help me find her!" Yukiko took a deep breath and pried the woman's hand off of her arm. Something definitely seemed off here. Perhaps this was some sort of scam. Distract the woman, then take her purse . . . she had heard about scams like that. But she wasn't carrying her purse. She had put it in the pouch on the back of Ray's stroller.

Thinking of Ray, Yukiko looked back over her shoulder, suddenly worried. Yes, there was the stroller, just a few feet way. From this angle, it looked like her purse was still secure in the storage pouch. But that was funny, she thought. Hadn't the stroller been facing the other way?

"I'm very sorry, but I can't help you," Yukiko said to the sobbing woman. The woman kept clinging to her arm. Finally, Yukiko gave her a good hard shove to free herself. Then she turned and hurried back to the stroller.

She was too late. The stroller was empty. Ray was gone. He could not possibly have unbuckled the straps himself. Someone had taken him.

Look though she might, she could not see anyone carrying a baby. Who had taken him? Why? Whoever the kidnapper was, he or she had had help in distracting her, Yukiko realized. If she could capture the woman in the kerchief, she would have a clue to hand over to the police. She whirled around in time to see the woman racing off. "Stop!" Yukiko yelled. "Kidnapper! Thief! STOP THAT WOMAN!" Heads began whipping around, startled. Mothers and nannies drew their charges closer to their side, as if one kidnapping in the park put all of their children in greater danger.

Though Yukiko galloped after the woman, it was no use. She had spent too much time panicking over Ray's kidnapping, and that had given the woman a head start. Though she ran as fast as she could, Yukiko had barely closed the gap between them at all by the time the woman reached the road on the far side of the park. The woman sprang into a van waiting there, and the van squealed off even before the door slammed shut.

"Someone, please! Get the license plate number of that van!" Yukiko yelled, hoping to get the attention of bystanders closer to the road. But as the van drove off, she she could see, even from this distance, that the license plate had been removed. There was nothing she could do but watch in shock as van roared away, carrying with it the best clue as to the whereabouts of her only child.


	7. Chapter 7

SEVEN: Threats and Schemes

Van's plan, such as it was, was to wander aimlessly around Harbor Parade, keeping his ear to the ground and his eyes peeled, in the hope that he'd learn something about the woman who was trying to steal his armor. If that didn't work, he would probably have to go to the police station to ask if they'd learned anything more. Perhaps he could find out more about this "Cesar Montana" for whom the goons were said to work.

He spent an hour or two scoping out areas where he thought armor riders might congregate. He learned nothing, except that Cesar Montana was Tony's younger brother, and it was rumored that he was going to be the head of the family when Tony passed away. No one had seen a woman with dark hair and blue eyes wearing a red dress. Of course, Van realized halfway through the morning, she might have changed her dress by now, which meant he had no way of identifying her.

Just as he was starting to think about giving up and going to the police, he decided to take a swing through the park along the north beach. He very much doubted that he was going to find his target lingering in the park, no matter how beautiful the day was, but this gave him an excuse to stop by the hotdog vender. (True, he had already had breakfast, and he was hoping to have lunch with Wendy, but there was nothing wrong with a mid-morning snack, was there?)

To his surprise, the park was full of police officers, and civilians had been blocked out of the park. They stood in large clumps, gossiping and watching the police work. The regular hotdog stand had closed—but the vender had set up a cart just outside the park. He was doing a brisk business selling food and drink to those watching the police.

"What happened here?" Van asked the vender as he paid for his hotdog.

"A kidnapping," the vender explained. "Some poor lady took her baby for a walk in the park, and the minute her back was turned, someone snatched the baby out of the stroller."

"That's terrible," Van commented. There didn't seem to be much else to say. He watched the police for a moment, thinking that if they were busy here, they would not likely have the time to help him track down Red Dress. Then he frowned, having see a familiar blond head. Was that Joshua? What on earth was he doing here? He stared, still holding his hotdog, until he was certain that it was, in fact, Joshua Lundgren. He took a bite of his hotdog and ducked under the police tape to head in Joshua's direction.

"Hey you," one of the policemen said. "You can't come in here."

"I'm with him," Van said, pointing at Joshua. The policeman didn't look satisfied with this answer, but Van didn't care. He marched past him and headed towards Joshua, still eating as he walked. His previous experience of Harbor Parade had involved a succession of dinners he hadn't been able to eat, and he wasn't willing to take chances.

"VAN!" Joshua yelled as soon as he saw him. He came running towards Van; Van prepared to duck, just in case, but Joshua came to abrupt halt just before crashing into him. "How did you hear?"

"I didn't," Van explained. "I just walked past the park and saw you here. What's going on?"

"Someone kidnapped Ray."

"Really? Why would they do that?" Who on earth would want to steal someone else's baby? Particularly a baby like Ray? The kid didn't even have much hair yet.

"We don't know!" Joshua exclaimed. "They haven't left a ransom note or contacted the police or ANYTHING. Maybe they're going to sell him on the blackmarket."

"There's a market for babies?" Van was momentarily curious, but decided that he really didn't want to know. He had just thought of something more important. "Are the police investigating the mafia?" he suggested. "They seem to be behind everything in this town."

"Why would the mafia want my baby?" That was a darn good question, as far as Van was concerned. Ray was a biter. Anyone with sense would have picked a different baby, unless . . . unless it wasn't about Ray at all.

"Dunno," Van said, "but it might have something to do with those idiots trying to steal my armor."

"Didn't you catch them yesterday?" Joshua asked, surprised.

"I caught the two goons, but not their ringleader. She gave me the slip." Joshua looked thoughtful for a moment.

"Yukiko said there was a woman involved in the kidnapping," he said slowly. "Could it be the same one?"

"Who knows?" There were a lot of women in Harbor Parade. Apparently, there were a lot of criminals, too. Van found himself briefly wishing that he were back in Evergreen, where it was much easier to keep track of who was who and what was what. "We can't assume that they're the same person." Though, even if it wasn't the same woman, they might all be working together. What were the odds that little Ray had been kidnapped by someone _not _connected to the Montana family?

"I don't see how kidnapping Ray would help them get your armor," Joshua was babbling. Van did, though. Anyone who had seen the Lundgrens at his wedding would rightly assume that they were close friends, and therefore important to him. He couldn't very well sit back and watch them mourn a missing child, not if there was something he could do about it.

"Look . . ." Van decided he might as well interrupt Joshua's frenzied and irrelevant babbling about Ray's feeding schedule and how he was missing his naptime."I need to go check on something. See ya." He pivoted around on one heel and began walking back the way he'd come.

"But where are you going? Where can I find you again?"

"Check at the hotel desk for any messages," he called back over his shoulder. Then he thought of something. "Don't worry, we'll find Ray!" He was not as confident about that as he sounded, but he could see that Joshua was falling apart.

Once he got out of the park, he walked quickly towards the hotel, ignoring the people who sometimes bumped against him. It was a beautiful autumn day and it seemed like everyone in Harbor Parade had decided to take a walk or go shopping. He fiercely wished that they would all go away.

As he had hoped (or feared?), there was a message waiting for him at the front desk of the hotel. The front desk clerk handed him a piece of plan white paper, folded over, and addressed to Pretty Boy Van of the Garbage Dump. He opened it up. The message inside was short was short and to the point. "Give us your armor or the baby gets it."

"Well, that's not very original," Van muttered. And how was he supposed to hand over his armor? There were no further instructions. "That's all there is?" he asked the clerk.

"That, and a verbal message. The man dropping it off said that he'd see you at the South Pier at sunset. He said you would know where." Van frowned. It surprised him a little that they wanted him to go back to the scene of their failed attempt to capture Dann. Then again, Red Dress had been able to give him the slip there. Maybe she was confident about her ability to do it again, if necessary.

"Thanks," Van said to the clerk. He walked out of the hotel lobby, found a bench, and sat down to think for a minute. This was going to be more complicated than most of his battles.

* * *

><p>There wasn't really much that Wendy could do at the empty campsite. She rolled up the bedding and tucked it out of the way, then cleared away the breakfast mess. After that, she took a walk around the little lake, enjoying the weather. Van had promised to be back by lunch, but she was not all that surprised when he didn't show up. Finding one person in a place as large as Harbor Parade was not going to be easy. It wouldn't surprise her if it ended up taking him more than a couple of days to track down the woman with the red dress who had wanted his armor.<p>

Wendy was expecting to spend a rather boring afternoon reading and waiting for Van to come back. She wasn't expecting to be disturbed by a knock on the cabin door. She nearly dropped her book in surprise. Van wouldn't have knocked. This must be someone else, then. It was hard to imagine who would know that she was here. Her heart began to beat more quickly, and she looked around the room for a possible weapon. The only knives in the kitchen were the rather dull camping knives she'd bought in town, and she hadn't thought to ask Yukiko to pack her gun.

Just as she was wondering whether it would be overkill to pick up a chair, she heard a familiar voice on the doorstep: "Wendy? Are you there?"

"Yukiko?" She ran to the door, feeling very silly. Of course: the only people who knew she was here were her friends! "What on earth are you doing here?" Instead of answering, Yukiko rushed up to Wendy and hugged her. Wendy hugged her back, not at all sure of what was going on.

"Thank goodness you're all right, at least," Yukiko said with a sniff.

"Yukiko . . . are you _crying_?" Wendy asked. "What's wrong?"

"It's Ray," her friend whispered. "They took Ray." Oh. There was nothing that Wendy could do or say that would make that better.

"I'm so sorry," she said. Then she confidently added:"Van will get him back." He'd better, or he'd have _her_ to answer to about it.

"I know . . . but there's so much that could go wrong . . . You see, Joshua's going to try to help him!"

Once again, Wendy was dumbfounded. "Oh." And Van was okay with that? Joshua was a brilliant scientist, a good friend, and a devoted husband and father, but he had never been all that useful in combat, so far as Wendy could remember. Like her, he had tended to help behind the scenes.

"He's tougher than he looks," Yukiko said, sounding a little defensive. "He rescued me from a guard at the Claw's base all those years ago, you know. That was when I knew I was in love with him." That was interesting, and another time Wendy would have loved to hear more about it, but there were more important things to discuss right now.

"Well, there's no need to keep standing in the doorway, is there? Why don't you come inside and take a seat?" Wendy suggested. Yukiko nodded and stepped back, wiping her eyes. It was disturbing to Wendy to see her like this. Her friend was usually calm and competent, even in the middle of a disaster.

"Oh, right, I brought your luggage." Yukiko glanced over her shoulder as she spoke, and Wendy looked, too.

"All of it?" Wendy stared. Until now she had not noticed that Yukiko had been dragging an enormous luggage cart, the type you sometimes saw in large train stations. It was heavily laden with an assortment of suitcases and duffel bags. "You brought that all the way from town?" Yukiko nodded.

"Joshua didn't think it would be safe for me to stay in the hotel," she explained. "So I checked out and brought everything with me. Including this." She reached into her handbag and pulled out Wendy's revolver. "I hope you didn't mind that I took it out of your suitcase," she said. "I was a little worried that I'd be followed, and I wanted to have it close at hand."

"Of course I don't mind," Wendy said. All the same, it was a comfort to have the gun back in her hands again. She had been all too aware of how vulnerable she was without it. "Now, come inside and tell me what's going on."

She and Yukiko sat down at the table, and Yukiko began to talk. Halfway through, Wendy stopped her in order to rummage through her luggage, looking for the notebook that she knew she had packed on a whim. Once she found it, she flipped it open to a clean page. "I want to take notes," she said, feeling a little silly. It wasn't as if she was trying to play detective, but she did want to sort out all the details.

"I'm probably leaving out some details," Yukiko admitted. "I gave the police a statement, but I'm sure by now I've forgotten some things." She closed her eyes, then took a breath, and opened them. "Over and over again, I keep seeing the moment when I reached the stroller and saw that he was gone."

"But you didn't see anyone carrying him away," Wendy mused. That struck her as odd, especially as Ray didn't particularly like being held by anyone other than his parents. He ought to have been raising a fuss. You would think he would have been easy to see, unless he was hidden or restrained somehow.

"I suppose someone could have put him in a bag." Yukiko didn't seem too happy about that prospect.

"Or hidden him underneath a loose coat?" Wendy suggested. "Would people have been wearing coats today?"

"Sweaters, maybe." Yukiko rested her chin on one hand as she thought about it. "There were a few people in the park with coats," she said at last. "It's possible." Wendy put a question mark next to "coat," though she wasn't sure how likely the idea was. Surely someone wearing a long, loose, heavy coat would have been very noticeable on a sunny morning in a tropical town?

"Now," she said, once Yukiko had told her story, "What exactly are Van and Joshua doing? What's their plan?"

"That's the problem! I don't think they have a plan. They're going to just show up at the meeting place and see what they can do to get Ray back." Wendy sighed. That sounded all too much like the way Van would approach such a problem. He was good at improvising his tactics in the middle of a battle. He was not so good at planning his strategy out ahead of time.

"Maybe there's something we can do to help," she suggested.

"What?" It was a good question.

"I don't know. Let's figure out all the facts first and then see if there's anything we all might have overlooked." It was probably a pointless endeavor, but at least she felt like she was doing something useful. She was sick and tired of sitting around waiting for other people to act.

As she and Yukiko talked, Wendy jotted down any questions she could think of that they might explore. She also kept an eye on the window. She had not forgotten her agreement with Van. If he wasn't back by sunset, she had his permission to go into town after him.

* * *

><p>At sunset, Van stood on the South pier again, waiting for his enemies. He stood near the end of the pier. Joshua was nearby, hiding in an empty shipping crate on one of the docked boats. He wanted to be within earshot in case Van needed help. Van did not think it was remotely likely that he would need him, but he could see that Joshua needed to be doing something to help. At least, he needed to believe that he was helping.<p>

Van wasn't at all sure how this was going to go down. He couldn't count on Red Dress being stupid enough to make the same mistakes she had made yesterday. He also couldn't afford to take any risks. If _he_ were injured, he would heal. Young Ray, on the other hand, was fragile and defenseless. Protecting him had to be Van's top priority now, even if that meant some temporary setback. After all, even if the mafiosi took Dann, they wouldn't know how to ride him. It ought to be easy enough for Van to steal his armor back once the Lundgren baby was safe.

Van knew that the mafiosi would likely take a different approach today than they had yesterday. He just hadn't counted on _how _different it would be. He wasn't prepared for someone from a passing boat to lob an object onto the end of the pier. Van whirled around at the sound, but all he could see was something the approximate size and shape of a softball. He turned back to scan the surroundings thoroughly. Because he was looking away, he didn't see the cloud of gas that began spilling from the object. . . not until he breathed in and drew a lungful of something that smelled sickly sweet.

He began coughing. At first, he thought that that was all that was going to happen. When he took a step away from the gas, he discovered that whatever this was, it was more than just a lung irritant. His legs wobbled underneath him, almost as if he were tipsy. And then he collapsed as suddenly as if he'd had a shot of tequila. He was out cold before his head hit the pavement.


	8. Chapter 8

EIGHT: Captives

Van woke up with what felt like a hangover. His first thought was that he had been drinking. Maybe someone had slipped something into his milk . . . it had happened before. Where he had he last eaten or drunk anything? He sat up to think about it, and immediately discovered that his problems included more than a hangover. His hands were bound behind his back, his feet were tied at the ankles, and they had taken his sword away.

When he realized that his sword was missing, he felt a moment of pure panic. He _needed _his sword! Without his sword, he couldn't summon Dann. Without Dann, he would die from overheating. Death would come within a couple of weeks.

That won't happen, Van assured himself. He would get his sword back. It shouldn't be too hard to get out of these ropes. Once his hands and feet were free, he was confident that he'd be able to take on any enemy, even without his sword. He began looking around the room for a potential weapon.

There wasn't much to see. He was in a rectangular room with a high ceiling. It looked like a storeroom of some type, but it also looked like it hadn't been used in years. There were wooden crates along the long wall facing Van, but the crates were all covered in dust. Half of them looked empty. There were some hooks and chains hanging from the ceiling: they looked like the remains of some kind of pulley system. He couldn't think of any way he could use them, but he made a mental note of their location, in case they proved useful after all.

It wasn't until Van looked down at the floor that he realized that he wasn't alone in the room. One of the crates had been pulled away from the others. It was moving slightly: shaking periodically, as if something inside were kicking at the walls. "What the hell?" Van muttered. Was there a cat or a dog in there? It looked like the right size to hold an animal, but he couldn't imagine why the mafia would want to shut a pet up in a crate. Then again, these were the same people who had kidnapped a perfectly annoying baby . . . maybe there was no limit to the things they'd do.

Thinking about little Ray's kidnapping, Van had a sudden inkling of what might be in the crate. If he was right, he was going to be even more pissed at these people.

It took him longer than he expected to work his hands out of the ropes. The rope was strong, and whoever had tied the knots had known what he or she was doing. He couldn't just wiggle his way out. He finally managed to find a broken crate with a sharp edge, and he used that to saw through the rope. Once his hands were free, he untied the rope around his legs.

Then he went to investigate the contents of the crate. The lid of the crate had not been nailed down; instead, it was fastened by pieces of wire wrapped around some of the slats. He undid the wire and lifted the lid. As he had half-expected, a blue-eyed baby stared up at him. "What are you doing here, kid?"

"Ba," the baby replied. That didn't explain much. Van frowned down at the little Lundgren boy. He knew nothing about babies, but even he knew that you shouldn't lock them in crates and leave them in dusty storerooms. The kid stank, as if his diaper were in dire need of changing. His small fists were raw, as if he had banging on the crate for hours.

"You're not going to bite me if I pick you up, are you?" Van asked. The baby just blinked at him. He picked him up out of the crate anyway, figuring that a bite from a mostly-toothless infant would be the least of his worries. "How are we going to get out of here?" Van mused, looking around the room. He hadn't expected to have to make his escape from the temporary prison with a baby in hand.

"Ba," said Ray.

"That's not very helpful," Van said sourly. He looked down and saw that Ray was chewing on the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. He sighed. "You're sure not making things any easier." Ray didn't seem to care.

* * *

><p>"You have to listen to me!" Joshua yelled at the police officer who had been assigned to talk to him. The officer had started off seeming helpful, but the more of Joshua's story he heard, the less interested he grew. By the time that Joshua explained about the gas grenade on the pier, the officer seemed to have given up entirely. He was now looking down at some paperwork on his desk, scrupulously refusing to meet Joshua's eyes.<p>

"Look, mister, if you don't shut up, we're going to put you in the drunk tank until you cool down."

"I'm not drunk!" He thought about the way he had wobbled when he first wandered into the police station, and added: "That was just the aftereffect of the gas grenade!" The man shuffled the papers around, picked up a pen, and began signing some forms.

"If you don't calm down, we'll have to contact the hospital. They'll send a nice young man in a clean white coat for you."

"I am not crazy!" Joshua bellowed. "We have to go rescue my son! And we have to get Van!"

"All available officers are already investigating the kidnapping. You need to take a seat in the waiting room. We'll inform you when we have new information." Joshua leaned forward and beat his head against the desk. It was a mistake: the desk was made of hard wood. Now, on top of the lingering effects of the gas grenade, he had a new headache.

"I _have _new information," he said. "Why doesn't anyone care about that?" The police officer refused to answer. Joshua hit his head against the desk again. Then he froze. Didn't he recognize that voice? But it couldn't be . . . he lifted his head and looked around. And sure enough, there was Yukiko talking to the receptionist at the front desk. Wendy was beside her, looking grim. "Excuse me!" Joshua blurted out to the officer, and he dashed off across the room. "Yukiko! Wendy! What's wrong!"

"Joshua!" Yukiko turned towards him at once, relief flashing across her face. "Where's Van?"

"I think he was captured," Joshua told her. Wendy gasped. He turned towards his friend and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Wendy, but there wasn't anything I could do. They were armed with some kind of sedative gas. We weren't expecting anything like that."

"It's not your fault," Wendy assured him. She looked terribly worried, though. Joshua could only sympathize.

"Did you at least learn something about the kidnappers?" Yukiko asked. "Do the police have any idea where Ray is?"

"No," he said, bitterly adding: "And even if they did know, I don't think they'd tell us." The receptionist at the desk looked up at him and glared when she heard this.

"I assure you, sir, the Harbor Parade police are hard at work on this case. You will be informed when there are any new developments."

"Let's talk somewhere else," Wendy suggested. Joshua nodded, as did Yukiko, and the three of them walked out of the police station. They were in the town square, and although darkness had fallen, the square was well lit. The major public buildings in the city were grouped around a miniature park, complete with flowerbeds, fountains, and plenty of benches. There were a few people standing in front of buildings talking, but for the most part, the crowds had moved on to livelier parts of the city. Somewhere, people were undoubtedly drinking, dancing, and partying. And somewhere, Ray was probably crying for his parents. Joshua tried not to think about that, but it was hard. Family had always been the most important thing in the world to him.

Wendy took the lead, directing them to a gazebo that was softly lit by ground lighting. It was an odd place for their conversation, but it had the advantage of being close to the police station. From the bench he chose, Joshua could look through the window and watch the bustling police officers inside the building. He liked to think that they were all working on finding Ray.

"Tell us everything that happened," Wendy directed. She dug around in her handbag and pulled out a notebook and a small flashlight. Yukiko held the flashlight for her, so that Wendy could see the notebook.

"Right. Well, for starters, I wanted to show up at the pier, too, but Van wanted to make sure that I was out of sight . . ." Joshua began. The story wasn't really all that long, but it took awhile to tell the whole thing, because Wendy kept interrupting him with questions. It was a little like being grilled by the police all over again. Finally, he finished.

"So the same people who have Ray probably also have Van as a captive now," Yukiko concluded.

"I think so," Joshua said. "I couldn't see what happened to him, because whatever gas they used affected me, too. I woke up an hour or two after sunset, and he was gone."

"At least Van learned something in his investigations this morning," Wendy said.

"What?"

"Well, we definitely know that the Montana family is involved, don't we? If those goons that Van captured yesterday worked for Cesar Montana, and Cesar is Tony's brother, we can assume that the Montana family is involved."

"That doesn't tell us much," Yukiko pointed out.

"But it might give us a direction we can look in," Wendy said. "Don't you think it's odd that they kept wanting Van to go to the South Pier?"

"Why?" Joshua didn't see anything odd about that. "If it was a convenient location once, it would be a convenient location again."

"But don't you wonder what made it such a convenient location?"

"It was pretty isolated . . ." Joshua began, but then his voice trailed off as he thought about it. He and Van had talked a lot about the case yesterday, and he had just remembered something that might be important. "Van said that the woman in the red dress escaped into one of the warehouses near the pier," he said. "She must be familiar with the area. Maybe that's why she picked the location."

"And if she's familiar with the area," Wendy suggested, "maybe it's because the Montana family owns property there." The three of them exchanged a long look as they considered this possibility.

"That makes a lot of sense," Joshua said.

"If someone in the Montana family owns property there, it ought to be in the city records, right?" Yukiko suggested.

"Unless they used a false name," Wendy said, sounding doubtful. "These are career criminals we're talking about, right? They're probably used to covering their tracks."

But as it turned out, the Montana family had not thought it necessary to cover their tracks in this case. It took some time before the group was able to convince anyone to listen to them, but once the new officer assigned to talk to them understood what they were suggesting, he agreed that it would make sense to check whether the Mafia had any buildings near the South Pier. It took more than an hour for someone to track down the right file at the Hall of Records, but eventually the officer came back with an answer: yes, there were two buildings on the South Pier owned by Montana family members. One was a boat repair shop owned by Tony Montana. The other was a warehouse registered to Cesar Montana; it was listed in the records as inoperative. "It looks like the family has abandoned it."

Wendy jotted down both addresses, putting a star next to the one owned by Cesar Montana; surely, if the kidnappers were using a building near the pier, it was most likely to be that one. If the boat repair shop was still in use, it wasn't likely to be used as a base or hideout for kidnappers. Besides, they had no reason to believe that Tony Montana was directly involved in this scheme to steal Dann: it might have been all his brother's doing.

"They only use it when they want to kidnap someone!" Joshua said bitterly.

"Now, don't be hasty," the officer said. "We don't know for certain that the Montana family is behind your son's kidnapping, and even if they were, we don't know for certain that they're using this building at all. There might be some clues there, but we'll need permission to search the place."

"Permission?" Joshua blurted out. "Why would they give you permission to search the place if they're using it for something illegal? And if they're hiding something there, they would move it before letting you search the place, wouldn't they?"

"We could ask a judge for a warrant," the officer said, "but most judges would want more evidence. We'll have to try it and see. We'll let you know the results tomorrow." And he politely but firmly shooed them out of the police station.

"Tomorrow," Yukiko said mournfully. "But Ray needs us now!"

"I bet if they wanted to, they could wake a judge up and get a warrant to search the place tonight," Wendy grumbled. "They just don't care."

"We have to do something!" Joshua said. On that, they were all agreed.

* * *

><p>Surprisingly enough, it was little Ray who gave Van the plan. The baby started fussing for some reason. Van tried making goofy faces at him to cheer him up, but that only made him cry louder. Then he tried tossing him in the air and catching him, as he had seen Joshua do. This made the baby scream.<p>

"Quiet down in there!" someone yelled from outside the room. Van froze and shot a worried glance in the direction of the doorway nearest the sound.

There were two doors in the storeroom. One was boarded shut, and decorated with what looked like an alarm system. Van had refrained from touching it. It might have been easy enough to pry the boards off, given some time, but it wouldn't be worth the risk of setting off the alarm. The other door was locked, and when he had gently tried pushing it, he had heard a soft rattle, as if it were chained or bolted on the other side. But chains could be broken. If there were any way in or out of the room, it would likely be through that door.

It sounded, though, as if the second door led into a room that was occupied. Van supposed that that made sense. These people weren't as stupid as he had originally thought. They must have realized that they would need to keep the prisoners under guard, even if they thought that Van was securely bound. What's more, unless the kidnappers were planning on letting Ray starve to death, they'd have to send someone in from time to time to take care of him. And, depending on how close the building was to its nearest neighbor, they might have a vested interest in keeping him quiet.

"Listen, kid," Van said to the baby. "I'm going to put you in the crate, and once I do, I want you to scream your head off until someone comes in the room. You got it?" Ray stared back at him, wide-eyed and uncomprehending. Van sighed. This plan was not going to work, because his partner was too young to understand the plan. He briefly toyed with the idea of making the baby cry somehow . . . but no, that would be cruel.

Besides, as fussy as Ray was right now, it seemed quite likely that he would would eventually start crying after he was put back in the crate. So Van returned him to crate and replaced the lid. He didn't rewire it tightly the way it had been before, but he did wrap the wire loosely around the slats on the lid. From a distance, it would look as if it were still wired shut.

Then he retreated to a hiding place behind a stack of three crates. Ray was still fussing quietly, but Van could only hope that any minute now he'd start screaming. A pair of lungs that powerful had to be good for something, didn't it?


	9. Chapter 9

NINE: Rescuers

It was highly unlikely that Ray understood anything about the plan, but fortunately, he cooperated anyway. After what seemed like an eternity of grumbling and fussing in the crate, he finally burst out screaming again. "Good boy," Van muttered, though he doubted the baby could hear him. With any luck, that would get the attention of the captors on the other side of the door.

Sure enough, after a few minutes, someone pounded on the door and yelled "Shut up, you little brat!" Ray paused for a minute, as if he were thinking about it. Then he began screaming more loudly. Van couldn't help smiling a little at that. Just a little, though. It was too early to tell if the plan would work.

Twice someone from the other room pounded on the door and yelled at the baby. Each time, Ray just screamed louder. Just as Van began to worry that the kid would damage his lungs, Van heard someone draw back the bolt on the other side of the door. He tensed up, ready to spring into action.

Without his sword, Van was limited, but he was hardly defenseless. He had broken off a plank from one of the crates. It was a little light for a club, but the broken end was sharp enough to draw blood, if he struck at the right angle. His main concern was about the kind of weaponry their captures might be using. If they opened fire with automatic weapons, the results could be disastrous, as he had no way of blocking the bullets to protect the Lundgren boy.

He was in luck. When the door opened, the man who walked into the room wasn't armed at all, except with a bottle. "Here, kid, we got some milk for you," he said. Van waited until the door swung shut and the man had his back turned to him. Then he stepped out from behind his hiding place, bashed the goon on the head, and caught the bottle as it fell from his hand. No need to waste perfectly good milk.

Van lifted the lid on the crate and peered inside. Ray stopped screaming and stared at him open-mouthed. "Good job, kid." Van handed him the bottle, hoping that he was old enough to know how to feed himself. He sure as hell didn't have time to feed the baby, even if he had known how. There might be other goons beyond the door, and they might start wondering where their companion was. He would have to act quickly.

He searched the unconscious goon, but found nothing more useful than a knife. He swiped the knife, hefted his board, and thought. His original plan had been to take the baby with him, but he didn't like his odds if he was armed only with a knife and a board. Carrying a baby would just hamper him. "You'd better stay here, kid." Ray didn't look up from the bottle he was holding. Looked like he did indeed know how to feed himself. That was a relief. "I'll get you when it's safe," Van continued. He was pretty sure that the kid had no idea what he was saying, but it would have felt weird to walk off without an explanation.

He paused by the door, listening for several minutes. He could hear nothing in the other room. If there were people in there, he couldn't tell. There could be half a dozen people in there watching the door. Or the room might be empty. He sighed, pulled the door open, and slipped through, keeping his back to the wall.

This room was much, much smaller than the storeroom that had been used as a prison for Van and Ray. It looked like an office, complete with a desk and filing cabinets, but the office furniture had been shoved into different corners of the room to make way for a small table. There were two chairs against the wall next to the door, and Van automatically picked one up in his left hand, still hefting his wooden club with the right.

There were two men sitting at the table, playing cards. One had his back to the door. The other was looking at his hand and counting his chips. "You ready for the next round?" he called, presumably addressing the goon he thought was returning.

"Sorry," Van said, "but I'm not much of a gambler." Both men stared at him in shock for a moment before drawing their guns. That pause gave Van enough time to close the gap across the room. He threw the chair at one of the men, than struck the other one with his makeshift club. The man dropped, as desired, but his club broke in half under the impact. Van ducked under the table to dodge the bullets of the remaining goon. Then, on a whim, he knocked the table over. As he'd hoped, the goon was sent sprawling, and his gun fell from his hand. Van lunged for it.

"Not so fast, buddy," someone said. He knew that voice. Why did he know that voice? He stared across the floor to an open door. Someone stood in the doorway, but Van was sprawled flat on the floor, and all he could see of her was her red leather pumps. His hand closed on the gun, but before he could do anything with it, the woman in the red shoes shot him in the back. As he collapsed in pain, he wondered vaguely what that sound from the backroom was. Had Ray gotten out of the crate somehow?

* * *

><p>After a long discussion at a twenty-four-hour diner, Wendy, Joshua, and Yukiko came to an agreement. All of them agreed that if the police weren't going to investigate that empty warehouse, they ought to do it. Where they differed was in the question of who should be involved, and how. Joshua, chivalrous as ever, wanted to break into the building by himself, with Wendy and Yukiko standing watch.<p>

Wendy had suggested a modification to the plan: Yukiko could stand watch, and she would provide Joshua with backup. She was, as she pointed out several times, the most experienced shooter. She'd had plenty of years of target practice with her revolver, and she had used it to defend herself in the past.

"This is my son we're talking about," Yukiko had insisted. "We're ALL going to help." Eventually, even Joshua admitted that she had a point. They came up with a rough working plan, but they knew that they would have to modify it once they got there and scoped the place out.

Sure enough, there were complications. The first obstacle was the presence of a long, low car. It pulled up to the front door just as they were prepared to make their entrance. The three of them watched from where they were hidden in the entryway of an abandoned building across the street. The car was idling for some reason; it looked as if the two people in the car might be arguing about something, though of course there was no way to tell for certain.

"I'll go around back," Joshua decided.

"But wasn't that the door that had the alarm system?" Wendy asked anxiously. They'd had time to make one round of the building. The alarm system on the rear entrance was what had convinced them to try the front door.

"I can disable that," he said, dismissing that concern. "Besides, if that's where the alarm is, that must be where they'd hide something valuable, don't you think?"

"I'll go with you," Yukiko said quietly. She was terrified, but she would rather be terrified with Joshua by her side than terrified on her own.

"I'll keep watch on this entrance," Wendy said. "There are some bushes in front of the building. Maybe I can get a bit closer."

"Be careful," Yukiko said, even though she knew how absurd such advice was. If they were really playing it safe, none of them would be here. They were doing this precisely because they were all willing to take risks for the ones they loved.

"You too," Wendy said. The three of them nodded at each other, their expressions grim. Then Joshua and Yukiko began the long, slow walk around the block. They could not move openly, for fear the people in the car might notice. At this time of night, the warehouse district was nearly abandoned. One or two of the operational warehouses might be guarded by night watchmen, but there would be no reason for bystanders to be about. It was hardly the sort of neighborhood where one might take a moonlight stroll. It was absolutely essential, therefore, that they keep out of sight. Their plan probably had only a little chance of success as it was, but it depended on the element of surprise. They were counting on the fact that the mafiosi wouldn't expect them to come looking for Van and Ray on their own. After all, any normal person would wait for the police to handle the problem.

What the kidnappers didn't realize was that Joshua, Yukiko, and Wendy were not normal. They were all, in their different ways, heroes. Well, Joshua and Wendy were heroes. Yukiko had always thought of herself as more of a supporter. She was willing to be heroic when it mattered, though, and nothing mattered more to her than family.

Yukiko and Joshua crept up to the warehouse from the back alley. Every sound that they made seemed to echo in the quiet night. At last they reached the locked door. Joshua opened his jacket so that he could reach inside for some of his tools. "This is a cheap security system," he said confidently. "I should have it disabled in minutes."

"Right," Yukiko murmured back, hardly daring to whisper in case someone was listening. Most of the street seemed to be sleeping soundly, but she had the odd sense that this building was awake. Maybe it that was her imagination, but maybe it wasn't. The blinds had been drawn tightly on all the windows, but they had all agreed that it looked like there were lights on in the building.

"Got it!" Joshua said. It seemed like it had taken him an eternity to disable the system and unlock the door, but it was really only a few minutes. Just then, there was the distinct sound of gunfire from within the building. Yukiko gasped. "Look, why don't you wait—"

She didn't give Joshua a chance to finish the sentence. "Ray could be in the middle of that," she said. "I'm going with you."

Her husband stared her in the face for a moment, then sighed, letting his shoulders slump. Much as he wanted to protect her, he knew there were some things he couldn't ask of her. "Let's go," he said grimly, and they entered the brightly-lit room.

It was, Yukiko saw, as her eyes adjusted to the lighting, a storeroom of some kind, full of crates. She peered in one and saw jars of some pale substance. Joshua picked up a jar and read the label. "Lutefisk," he read. "What on earth is that?"

"You don't want to know," Yukiko said with a shudder. "Try not to break any of the jars," she added. "We don't want to release the smell."

"Smell?" Joshua repeated. "Is that what that smell is?" She sniffed the air.

"No . . ." she said slowly. "It smells like someone left a pile of dirty diapers in here." They exchanged a worried look, and moved further into the room.

It wasn't until she was nearly in the center of the room that she heard the sound. She froze, and tugged on Joshua's sleeve. "Shh, she whispered. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?" She didn't want to say what she thought it sounded like, in case she was wrong. She just hurried forward to the crate that seemed to be the source of the sound. It was also the source of the stench, which gave her even more confidence. By the time she reached it, she was certain that she knew what it contained. The lid wasn't fastened, so she yanked it off. "Ray!" she gasped, looking down at the contents of the crate.

Ray lowered his bottle, looked up and her, and grinned. He was in dire need of a diaper change, that was clear, but he appeared to be otherwise unharmed. "Ba!" he crowed gleefully. Yukiko burst into tears.

* * *

><p>There were few working streetlights in this neighborhood. Wendy found this to be convenient, as she was able to use one of the patches of shadow to sneak across the street, out of sight of the occupants of the long, low car idling in front of the warehouse. Then she crawled toward the door, literally crawling on her hands and knees while clinging to the protection of a few raised beds of flowers and the occasional shrubbery.<p>

As she neared her destination, she thought that she heard gunfire coming from the warehouse, but she tried to ignore it. Rushing in waving her revolver probably wasn't a good idea, what with that car still occupied. Besides, she reminded herself, the key of their plan was surprise.

By the time she got to the warehouse, she was glad of the shelter offered by a low hedge. Just as she reached the hedge, the door of the car opened, and someone got out. By the click of her heels on the sidewalk, Wendy guessed the unknown person to be a woman. Could this be the woman in the red dress who had tried to take Van's armor? Or the woman who had taken Yukiko's baby? Or maybe both . . . .

Wendy lay flat on the ground, hiding her face so that there would be no chance that a glint of light in her eyes might give her away. She listened as the woman approached the door. There was a sudden burst of light as the woman flung the door open, and then the sound of a handgun being fired. Then nothing. Wendy cautiously lifted her head and peered across the short lawn into the open doorway. Her heart gave a lurch when she recognized the black-clad form lying on the floor inside.

_Van!_ She was too far away to tell if he was breathing, but he was all too still. Had that woman just shot him? Or was he already dead? Wendy's jaw tightened. She reached a hand back to draw her gun, and she began creeping towards the door, still trying to keep to the shadows. It was quite possible that the person still waiting in the car could see her, but she would have to take that chance.

Wendy reached the open doorway just in time to see a woman in a red trenchcoat crouch down on the floor next to Van and reach towards him, as if she were going to turn him onto his back to see if he were alive. I don't think so, Wendy thought to herself. She sprang to her feet and raised her revolver. Amazingly, the woman didn't even notice she was there, until Wendy growled: "Don't you touch him! He belongs to _me_!"


	10. Chapter 10

TEN: Lutefisk Attack!

"He belongs to _you_?" the woman reported. Her voice dripped with scorn, as if it were laughable that a man like Van would have anything to do with Wendy. She stood up and glared across the room at Wendy. Her eyes narrowed as she saw the gun pointed right at her.

"That's right," Wendy answered. "And before you ask, yes, I have used this gun before." She had even killed a man with it once. Under these circumstances, she didn't think she would mind at all if she had to do it again. She was not normally a violent person; far from it. But there were some things she just could not stand. "Now get away from my husband."

The woman obeyed, but she moved very slowly. That might have been caution on her part, but Wendy was skeptical. "You'd better not try anything."

"Wouldn't dream of it, darling," the woman said with mock sweetness.

"Empty your pockets," Wendy said. Then she had a better idea. "Take off your trench coat and put it on the table." The woman obeyed, still glaring at her. She wore a gray woolen dress underneath. If not for the trench coat, she would have looked like a businesswoman.

Now what? Wendy wondered. She desperately wanted to run to Van to see if he was still alive. She thought that she had seen his fingers twitch as she was talking to the woman, but she couldn't be certain until she checked. Even if he were alive, he might be injured, and who knew whether Dann's healing powers were working?

"Are you going to make me stand here all night?" the woman mocked.

"Maybe," Wendy said darkly. "Who are you, anyway?"

"None of your business." Wendy's finger tightened on the trigger, just a little.

"I'm Tia Montana," the woman said at last. Wendy studied her, frowning. She didn't look much like either Bunny or Tony Montana, and they were the only two members of the family Wendy had met.

"Any relation to Cesar?" she guessed.

"Sister," the woman admitted, then added: "Half-sister." Which meant that she must be Tony's sister too, not that that necessarily mattered. Cesar and his sister might have plotted this attempt to capture Van's armor without their older brother's help. Or perhaps Tia had come up with the plan on her own. "And I'm warning you, if you so much as harm a hair on my head, the whole Montana family is going to come after you."

"If you've killed my husband," Wendy said quietly, "then it won't matter what you do to me." She didn't even want to imagine living without him.

"Oh, very touching," the woman scoffed. Then her eyes strayed from Wendy to look at something beyond her. Wendy, who had not been paying any attention at all to the surroundings apart from this room, froze. There was someone standing in the doorway that led outside; she was certain of it. But she dared not turn and look. "Glad you made it," the woman said to the newcomer.

"What's going on here?" growled a deep voice. At that, Wendy glanced briefly over her shoulder. She just had time to see a tall man in a business suit. He was older than the woman by at least ten years or so, but there were only the faintest touches of gray in his dark hair. He was not openly carrying a gun, but Wendy wouldn't have been at all surprised if he had one concealed somewhere. He looked entirely too confident for the situation.

Wendy had only looked away from the woman for a few seconds, but that was too long. When she looked back the woman had drawn a knife—where had that come from?—and was kneeling next to Van, holding the knife to his throat.

"Now," she said, "I think it's your turn to put down your weapon."

Wendy blinked, having seen two things almost simultaneously. First, Joshua stood in the open doorway at the back of the room, his arms full of glass jars, and his face wearing a look of confusion. Second, she was absolutely certain that she had seen Van shift his neck slightly, moving it away from the knife blade. He was alive.

She wasn't sure that she was going to be alive much longer herself, though. The man in the business suit had come through the door, and the way he slipped his hand into his suit jacket suggested that he was about pull out a hidden gun.

"I said, put the gun down," Tia growled. Wendy hesitated for just a second, then obeyed: it was clear that her enemies had the upper hand for now. She sank very slowly to the floor so that she could put the gun down while still being within reach of it.

"Now step away from the gun," ordered the man in the business suit.

But before Wendy could obey, two things happened. First, Joshua started lobbing glass jars at the man in the business suit. The startled man raised both hands to block his face. In the process, he carelessly dropped the gun he had been hiding under his jacket. Tia was equally surprised by Joshua's attack. She whirled around, facing away from Van and towards Joshua. She also took the knife away from Van's throat, apparently having forgotten that she needed him as a hostage. Wendy used that opportunity to pick up her revolver again. Then she made a dive after the businessman's gun, too.

Meanwhile, Van made use of Tia's distraction to roll away from her. Wendy could only watch him from the corner of her eyes, but she thought that he was moving a little more slowly than usual. He might have been badly hurt after all. But by the time Tia looked back at him, he had gotten to his feet with the help of one of the wooden chairs that were scattered around the room.

Wendy stood up again, too, and pointed her revolver at Tia, while trying to keep an eye on the businessman. He had just realized that his gun was gone, and he did not look happy. He was also covered in some-foul smelling jelly-like substance. Maybe that was what he was unhappy about.

"What_ is_ that stuff?" Wendy asked Joshua.

"Lutefisk!" he chirped happily. "I don't know what it is, but it must be the mafia's secret weapon."

"I knew that stupid stuff was a waste of money," Tia grumbled. She looked back and forth between Wendy, Van, and Joshua. Wendy was the only one of the three who was armed (unless you counted Joshua's remaining jar of lutefisk), but Van looked the most imposing, despite the fact that he was still leaning on a chair for support.

"You'd better put your knife down," Wendy suggested to Tia.

"What is all this?" asked the man in the business suit. His blustering was much less threatening now that he was covered in lutefisk.

"That's what we'd like to ask you," Wendy replied.

"Yeah, you've got a lot to answer for," Van growled. It was the first time he had spoken. "What kind of bastard leaves a baby in a crate all day?"

"Baby?" the man repeated, sounding honestly puzzled. "I thought this was all about an armor deal. What is this, Tia?"

"Things got a little complicated, Cesar," she said shortly. "But we do have Pretty Boy Van's armor." Wendy frowned, realizing that Tia had not put down her knife. But she didn't get a chance to point this out.

"Not for long, you don't," Van muttered. No one paid much attention to him.

"I think your explanations should be saved for the police!" Joshua declared. He actually sounded threatening, too, despite being armed with only a jar of lutefisk. Wendy was just a tiny bit impressed. Yukiko had once claimed that Joshua could be surprisingly badass in a pinch, but Wendy had never really seen it for herself until now.

"There's no need to drag the police into this," Cesar Montana (assuming that's who he was) said. "I'm sure we can settle this amicably."

"Like Hell we will," Tia muttered. And she lunged across the room at Wendy. Wendy had been focusing most of her attention on Joshua and Cesar, and she wasn't expecting an open attack, especially not from someone armed only with a small knife. She whipped her head around just in time to see Van pick up the chair next to him and bring it smashing down on Tia's head before she could reach Wendy.

"What an unseemly mess," complained Cesar. "My sister ought to know better." Wendy ignored him completely.

"Are you alright?" she asked Van. She thought he was still moving a bit stiffly.

"Huh? I'm fine. It just takes awhile for Dann to heal major wounds. Hey, we should get some of these."

"Some of what?" Wendy was starting to feel a little confused.

"These." He put the chair down and patted it to indicate what he was talking about.

"Chairs?" Wendy now felt more than a little confused. She already owned a set of kitchen chairs.

"Yeah. They're pretty handy. That makes two or three people I knocked out with them today."

"Look," interrupted Cesar, "I don't know what my sister was doing, but I'm only here to buy armor."

"Dann isn't for sale." Van spoke in a voice which left little room for argument. "And you couldn't use him even if he were. He only works for a rider who's been linked to him."

"I see. Then I suggest that we all just walk away and put this behind us. Agreed?"

"No." Surprisingly, that response came from Yukiko. She stood in the doorway, just behind Joshua, holding Ray in her arms. "That woman kidnapped my son. We aren't letting her get away with that."

"That's right," Joshua agreed. "We're going to take this to the police." And they did.

* * *

><p>Naturally, the Harbor Parade police were at a complete loss as to how to deal with the situation. Van yelled at them, Joshua offered complicated explanations, Cesar Montana tried to bribe them, and Wendy just buried her head in her hands and tried to ignore the pandemonium. All she wanted to do was go home and fuss over Van.<p>

In the end, Yukiko was the one primarily responsible for explaining the story in a way that the rather slow-thinking desk sergeant could understand. Once everything had been sorted out, the police took Tia Montana and her goons into custody. Cesar Montana had very effectively claimed ignorance of the entire scheme, so he was allowed to leave. Wendy, at least, suspected that some of his innocence might be an act, but what could they do? To his credit, he did seem to be genuinely shocked by the kidnapping; he also rather helpfully returned Van's sword. It had been in his keeping, because Tia had given to him as proof that she had Dann in her possession. She had, according Cesar, lied about how she got the armor in the first place.

By the time the police let Van, Wendy and the Lundgrens go, it was nearly morning. By common agreement, they all went back to the cabin Van and Wendy had been camping in. It made rather cramped quarters for so many people, and there was very little privacy, but since the Lundgrens had already stored their luggage there, it made sense to return. Besides, by that time, none of them felt all that fond of Harbor Parade.

Joshua and Yukiko were disgusted enough by the visit that they decided to hop on a bus as soon as the police told them that they could leave town. This took a couple of days, but finally the police gave them the green flag to go. Most likely, they would be called on to testify at the trial, but for now, they could go home and recover.

Wendy and Van followed them to the bus station, despite Van's grumbling about the long walk. He had completely recovered from his gunshot wound, so Wendy ignored his complaints. "I'm so sorry about all of this," Wendy said, giving Yukiko a good-bye hug. "When we invited you to our wedding, we had no idea . . ."

"Of course you didn't know any of this would happen," Yukiko said, hugging her back. "And we're all fine now, aren't we? All's well that ends well."

"We ought to get together again sometime . . . somewhere safer," Joshua suggested. He and Van shook hands rather awkwardly.

"You know," Van said, unexpectedly, "you ought to get that kid some voice lessons."

"Huh?" Joshua gaped. Yukiko frowned and raised her eyebrows, looking at Wendy for clarification. Wendy just shrugged. She had no idea what Van was talking about, either.

"He's got a powerful set of lungs," Van explained. "You should let him put them to good use."

"Ba!" Ray shrieked. It sounded like he agreed.

* * *

><p>Sorry about the delay on this chapter, folks. The next update should come soon. Alas, it will be the last update: as you can probably tell, the story's winding down. The last chapter will be an epilogue which wraps up some remaining Wendy-and-Van issues.<p> 


	11. Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Wendy watched the bus roll away, taking the Lundgrens back to Gloria. Van stood beside her, watching the bus, too. But whereas Wendy was wondering when the next bus to Evergreen would be leaving, and whether they should see about getting tickets, Van apparently had something else on his mind. "When we have kids, are they going to scream as much as that Ray kid does?"

"I don't know," Wendy admitted. "Maybe."

Van sighed. "I'd better get earplugs," he muttered. But that was all that he said. Despite his grumbling, Wendy guessed that he had probably gotten along with the baby better than he was letting on. She thought that was a good sign, but decided not to push the issue of children any further for now.

They turned and walked back up the street. By mutual consent, they turned in the direction of the park. Wendy couldn't think of anywhere else to walk to, unless they wanted to go back to their cabin in the abandoned campground. That wasn't a particularly appealing idea at the moment. After having spent a couple of days sharing the space with the Lundgrens, she was rather glad to be out in the fresh air.

"The ocean looks lovely today," Wendy said at last, feeling that someone ought to break the silence. She realized that she had not really been alone with Van for any extended period of time since the morning after the wedding. Was that why things felt so awkward?

"I hate the ocean."

She sighed, but decided not to argue. To tell the truth, she wasn't all that enthusiastic about Harbor Parade's ocean views anymore, either. This tropical paradise seemed to come at too high a cost. "Maybe we should just go home," she suggested at last. She hated to be the one to say it. It felt like giving up. But she wasn't sure how much aimless wandering around the park she could stand, especially with Van in one of his crankier moods.

"Maybe." Van paused to eye the hot dog stand thoughtfully. To her surprise, he went on to say: "We could go camping."

"Aren't we already camping?" What else did you call squatting in an abandoned campground?

"It isn't camping if you have a roof over your head," he retorted. "Why don't we just walk back to Evergreen? We could sleep under the stars. That would be really roughing it."

"Walk back to Evergreen? That'd take _weeks_!" Wendy was aghast. They were talking about hundreds of miles. "We have to be back at work in a few days." And _that_ was depressing. They hadn't really had a honeymoon at all.

"They'd be fine without us," Van grumbled.

"That's not true," Wendy muttered back. "Not in my case anyway." Her assistant managers were having to cover all her shifts, with occasional assistance from Jean-Jacques, who owned the restaurant she managed. She was pretty sure that they'd be upset if they had to keep working overtime for longer than they had agreed. She didn't think that Sheriff Cooper would be all that thrilled about having his Special Armor Division out of action for weeks, either.

"We could start walking, then catch a train or something when we ran out of time. Beats staying here."

"Well, that could work," Wendy said slowly. She wasn't all that keen on this idea. But they'd tried things her way, and look how that had turned out. Maybe it was time to try what Van wanted.

"It's not like we have anything else to do."

"We could take a cruise!" Wendy suggested. "There are some short ones that only last a few days." That would get them out of town for awhile, and still leave them time to get back to Evergreen.

"I don't like boats." This was the first time Wendy had heard this one, and she was a little skeptical. She had a feeling that Van was going to claim not to like anything she suggested . . . except maybe lunch.

"You'd really rather just walk back?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"All right," she decided. "We'll do that. But let's get lunch first," she added quickly. She was getting tired of eating sandwiches on stale bread.

* * *

><p>Finding a diner and eating lunch was easy. Everything else seemed to take forever. Wendy had quite a bit of luggage, and she didn't particular want to cart all of it along behind her. Some of it she took with her, and some of it she mailed back to Evergreen—which meant one last walk into town so that she could stop at the post office. She also had to buy a pair of good walking shoes, because the boots she'd been wearing were putting blisters on her feet. After that, Van thought they needed a mid-afternoon snack.<p>

By the time they set out for real, it was late in the afternoon, and Wendy was already tired of walking. She was sure that they weren't going to get very far before nightfall. She was wrong about that: they got several miles further than she had expected, because Van kept rejecting possible camping sites. This one was too close to the road; that one was too near a farm. The sun was almost completely beneath the horizon by the time he found a grove of trees that was sufficiently far from civilization to satisfy his tastes. There was a creek at hand, so they had running water to wash in. On the whole, it wasn't a bad place to spend the night, if you liked open air camping.

Wendy slipped off her new shoes and sat on the creek bank, dangling her sore feet in the water. The creek was fast-running, so the water was cold, but just then that felt good. She didn't think she would enjoy the temperature nearly as much when it came time to wash up, though.

Van had found a thick clump of grass to serve as a pillow. He was lounging on the ground, looking up at the evening sky. "It's good to be alone," he said. "Weren't you tired of all those people?"

"A little," she admitted. The silence that fell between them now was a comfortable one. Van's cranky mood, whatever its origins, seemed to have passed. "Are you hungry?" Wendy asked at last, wondering if she should start digging through the supplies for something to eat.

"Not really," Van said. "But why are you sitting so far away?"

"What on earth are you talking about?" Wendy twisted around so that she could see Van's face. It was not like him to _not _want dinner.

"Come over here," he suggested.

"Why?" It seemed like an odd request. She had no idea what Van was thinking. His hat hid most of his face, so she couldn't see his expression.

"We're alone now, aren't we?" This time she saw the glint in his eye as he peered up at her from under the brim of his hat, and she suddenly realized what he had in mind. To her embarrassment, she blushed.

"But we're out in the open!"

"So? We're the only people for miles!" Which, Wendy realized, was probably why he had chosen_ this_ place to camp.

"I guess that's true," she admitted, still blushing a little. "Let me grab a couple of blankets." Maybe making love under the open sky appealed to some people, but all Wendy could think of was how exposed they were.

As it happened, her attention was soon so completely occupied that she forgot to worry about exposure. Still, the blankets were useful later, as the night grew darker and the temperature dropped. "We didn't even make a campfire," Wendy pointed out, yawning a little. "It think it's going to be cold tonight."

"It'll be warm enough," Van insisted. Wendy was not sure that she trusted his judgment on this point. He had spent years of his life sleeping outside in all kinds of weather, so his definition of "too cold" was probably not the same as hers. But she didn't want to be the one to crawl out from under a warm blanket to gather firewood, so she didn't protest.

"It _is _nice to be heading home," she murmured, resting her head on her husband's shoulder. Then she felt compelled to add: "Look, I'm really sorry about all this."

"Huh? All what?"

"You know. All this trouble. The mafia trying to steal your armor; the baby being kidnapped; the police wanting to question us. None of that would have happened if we'd just gotten married at the courthouse in Evergreen, like you wanted. It really has been a terrible wedding."

"No," Van said, to her surprise. "We all came out of it alive." He turned his head a little so that he could brush his lips against her hair. "I have you," he said, sounding a little smug. "That makes it a good wedding."

"At least we'll have an interesting story to tell," she said, smiling a bit at the thought. She had heard tales of wedding disasters before, but she didn't know anyone with a story like this one.

Overhead, the stars were starting to come out. There were only a few clouds, so Wendy could see most of the heavens. "I wonder if one of those stars is really Dann's satellite," she murmured. She wasn't sure quite how Dann's orbital pattern worked, but she thought the satellite must be somewhere overhead. She felt Van shift a little, as if he was startled by what she'd said, though she couldn't imagine why.

"Wendy. . ."

"Yes?" she prompted, when he fell silent.

"I should have told you this earlier . . ." Wendy had a hunch that she knew what he was going to say, but she stayed quiet, wanting him to have a chance to finally say it. "You know how Dann's healing function works?"

"Yes," she prompted. "It heals your injuries and keeps you from getting sick. And keeps you from aging."

"Well, that's how it used to work . . . but we changed it. Joshua and I. I mean, he reprogrammed it, but I asked him to do it. It still heals me . . . well, you know that . . . but only when I'm injured. It won't stop me from aging."

Wendy wondered if she should admit to him that she already knew that. She decided that this would just add to the awkwardness of an already tense situation. Instead, she asked: "Why did you do that? You know that I would never have asked you to give up immortality for me."

"I didn't do it for you."

"You didn't? Then why . . . ?"

"I did it for me," he said, speaking very softly. "I didn't think that I could stand watching you grow old and die if I had to keep living. I didn't want . . . I didn't think I could stand to be alone again."

"Oh, Van," Wendy said. She propped herself up on one arm, leaned over him, and kissed him. It was hard to know what else to say, but she did her best. "You know that people die for all kinds of reasons," she pointed out. "They die young, sometimes, like my parents. They get killed in accidents or catch illnesses or die in childbirth. There's no guarantee that I'll even live to grow old. You might still end up alone." She said the last line softly. She didn't want to alarm him, but it was something that he needed to consider.

"So? None of those things are certain," Van said. "But aging is. At least this way we have a chance." He reached up to stroke her face. "It's not like I ever _wanted_ to live forever," he said gruffly. "All I ever wanted was to be with the woman I loved." Wendy closed her eyes, hearing the pain behind his words.

"You should have told me this earlier," she said. "This is something I had a right to know."

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled. She opened her mouth to protest a little more, but he kissed her into silence.

"Van, I'm serious," she said, once she had moved away from him a little. "We're married now. We shouldn't keep secrets from each other."

"You might be right," he admitted, "but this is hard."

"What is?" Once again, she wasn't following his train of thought.

"Having someone to share everything with," he explained. "It's not like it's bad," he added quickly. "But it takes practice. I'm not trying to hide things from you, but I'm not used to being this close to anyone. Look, I can't promise to be a perfect husband, okay?"

Wendy very nearly retorted that she of all people knew quite well that he wasn't perfect. Instead, she said: "I'm not asking you to be a perfect husband. I'm just asking you to be _my_ husband. I mean, I just want us to be unified . . . not to let anything come between us . . . I mean, I want us to really be together." This wasn't quite what she meant to say, but she didn't know how to say what she really meant.

"We are," he assured her. "For as long as we live." He drew her back into his arms and sealed his words with a kiss.

THE END

* * *

><p>Sorry for the delay; endings always seem to give me more trouble than I expect. As you can see, this is mostly just emotional fluffiness, but I hope it gave enough closure to the story.<p>

Thanks for reading, everyone, and thanks for all the reviews!


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